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Book X 



CTOHIUGHT DEPOSm 



POETIC ORIGINS 
AND THE BALLAD 



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POETIC ORIGINS 
AND THE BALLAD 



BY 

LOUISE POUND, Ph.D. 

Professor of English in the University of Nebraska 



jQeto gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1921 

All rights reserved 






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COPTBIGHT, 1921, 

By THE MACMILL'N COMPANY. 
Set up and electrotyped. Published, January, 1921. 



JAN 26 ■' 



DLl 



©CI.A605517 



TO 
HARTLEY and NELLIE ALEXANDER 



PREFACE 

The leading theses of the present volume are that the 
following assumptions which have long dominated our 
thought upon the subject of poetic origins and the ballads 
should be given up, or at least should be seriously quali- 
fied ; namely, belief in the " communal " authorship and 
ownership of primitive poetry; disbelief in the primitive 
artist; reference to the ballad as the earliest and most 
universal poetic form; belief in the origin of narrative 
songs in the dance, especially definition of the English and 
Scottish traditional ballad type as of dance origin ; belief 
in the emergence of traditional ballads from the illiterate, 
that is, belief in the communal creation rather than re- 
creation of ballads; belief in the special powers of folk- 
improvisation; and belief that the making of traditional 
ballads is a " closed account." The papers making it up 
are reprinted, with a few modifications and considerable 
additional material, from the Publications of the Modern 
Language Association of America, from Modern Philology, 
from The Mid-West Quarterly, and from Modern Lan- 
guage Notes. A few are printed for the first time, and the 
chapter on " Balladry in America " is indebted to a chapter 
on " Oral Literature in America " published in The Cam- 
bridge History of American Literature. Thanks are due 
to the publishers for permission to utilize passages from the 
latter. The polemical tone of the papers, which is so 
marked as to need explanation, is to be accounted for by 



viii PREFACE 

the fact that each was written to urge a distinctive point 
of view or to oppose some accepted position, i. e., was a 
piece of special pleading. It was impossible to eliminate 
the argumentative note without re-writing the articles 
in toto. 

Much attention is given in the course of the volume to 
the subject of folk-song in America. 

The author wishes to express grateful acknowledgment 
to Professor H. M. Belden of the University of Missouri, 
who first encouraged her to interest herself in the study 
of folk-song, and to Professor H. B. Alexander of the 
University of Nebraska, to whom she owes her interest in 
poetic origins and in much more besides. Both have read 
the manuscript in parts and to both she is indebted for 
generous assistance. Adequate acknowledgment of their 
help cannot be dismissed with a phrase. 

Louise Poinm 

University of Nebraska. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface . . . . . . vii 

CHAPTER 

I The Beginnings of Poetry 1 

I " Communal " Authorship and Ownership . . 4 

II Individual Authorship and Ownership ... 13 

III The " Ballad " as the Earliest Poetic Form . . 27 

H The Mediaeval Ballad and the Dance 36 

I The Name "Ballad" 39 

II Dance Songs Proper 47 

III Narrative Songs and the Dance 67 

III Ballads and the Illiterate 87 

I Sources of Recovery 89 

II Audience and Authorship as Mirrored in the 

Ballads 95 

III The Ballads and Literature 106 

IV The Ballad Style 120 

I Incremental Repetition and Other Ballad Man- 
nerisms 121 

II Dialogue and Situation Ballads and Theories of 

Development 139 

III The " Uniformity » of the Ballad Style ... 146 

IV Improvisation and Folk-Song 153 

V The English Ballads and the Church .... 162 

I The Earliest Ballad Texts 163 

II Some Ballad Affiliations 171 

III BaUads and Clericals 183 

ix 



x CONTENTS 

VI Balladry in America 192 

I Old-World Ballads and Songs in America . . 193 

II Indigenous Ballads and Songs 201 

III The Southwestern Cowboy Songs and the Eng- 

lish and Scottish Ballads 214 

IV Ballad Making as a " Closed Account "... 231 
Index 237 



POETIC ORIGINS AND 
THE BALLAD 

CHAPTER I 
THE BEGINNINGS OF POETEY 

Certain [Indian] societies require that each member have a 
special song ; this song is generally of the man's own composition, 
although sometimes these songs are inherited from a father or a 
near relative who when living had been a member of the society. 
These individual songs are distinct from songs used in the cere- 
monies and regarded as the property of the society, although the 
members are entitled to sing them on certain occasions. When 
this society holds its formal meetings a part of the closing 
exercises consists of the simultaneous singing by all the mem- 
bers present of their individual songs. The result is most dis- 
tressing to a listener, but there are no listeners unless by chance 
an outsider is present, for each singer is absorbed in voicing 
his own special song which is strictly his own personal affair, 
so that he pays no attention to his neighbour, consequently the 
pandemonium to which he contributes does not exist for him. 

The foregoing paragraph from Miss Alice C. Fletcher's 
account of Indian music - 1 reads like a travesty of the ac- 
cepted view of primitive song, its character and author- 
ship. There is the familiar primitive " horde/' engaged 
in festal singing, without onlookers. Yet instead of col- 

i The Study of Indian Music. Reprinted from the Proceedings of 
the National Academy of Sciences, vol. I, p. 233. 1915. According 
to Miss Fletcher, the Indians are sitting as they sing. 

Compare a custom among the Karok, an Indian tribe of California 
(Stephen Powers, Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. 
in, p. 29, Washington, 1877). 

1 



2 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETEY 

laborative composition, improvisation, and communal 
ownership of the ensuing " ballad/' we have individual 
authorship and ownership, and individual singing. This 
is the testimony of a specialist who has spent many years 
among the people of whom she writes, studying and record- 
ing their songs and their modes of composition. Easily 
recognizable is the homogeneous primitive group, singing 
in festal ceremony; but this group does not conduct itself 
in the way which literary historians have insisted that we 
should expect. 

The songs of primitive peoples have received much at- 
tention in recent years, especially the songs of the Ameri- 
can Indians. An immense amount of material has been 
collected and made available; and this has been done in 
a scientific way, with the help of countless phonographic 
and other records. Instead of having to rely on the stray 
testimonies of travellers, explorers, historians, and essay- 
ists, the student of primitive poetry has now at his disposal 
an amount of data unavailable to his predecessors. He 
need noi linger among the fascinating mysteries of roman- 
tic hypotheses, but can supply himself with the carefully 
observed facts of scientific record. 2 

In this matter it cannot be valid to object that we should 
not look among North or South American Indians, or Eski- 

2 References of chief importance for the American Indians are 
Frederick R. Burton, American Primitive Music, with especial atten- 
tion to the songs of the Ojibways, New York, 1909; Natalie Curtis, 
The Indian's Book, New York, 1900;. and the following thorough 
studies: Frances Densmore, Chippewa Music, in Bulletins 45 (1910) 
and 53 (1913) of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and Teton 
Sioux Music, Washington (1918); Alice C. Fletcher, A Study of 
Omaha Indian Music, Papers of the Pea-body Museum, vol. I, No. 
5, 1893, Indian Story and Song, Boston, 1900, The Hako: a Pawnee 



POETIC OKIGINS 3 

mos for " be^tmings." It cannot reasonably be said that 
these tribes are too advanced, too highly civilized, to afford 
trustworthy evidence as to aboriginal modes. As a matter 
of fact, we can go little farther back, in the analysis of cul- 
ture, than these people, if we are to stay by what can be 
demonstrated. When we have learned what we can learn 
from the primitive tribes on our own continent, in South 
America, Africa, Australia, Oceania, we know very nearly 
all that we can surely know. If we go to the prehistoric, 
we are conjecturing, and we ought to label our statements 
" conjecture." In general, gradations of " primitive- 
ness " among savage peoples are difficult to make. A 
social group may show the simplest or least organized 
social structure, and yet be relatively advanced in musical 
and artistic talent. Another group may show advance in 
social organization, yet be backward in song and story. 
And certainly even the most advanced of the Indian com- 
munities (with the exception of civilized Mexico and 
Peru) are every whit as primitive as the medieval peasant 
communes, from whose supposed ways we are constantly 
asked to learn as regards poetic beginnings. 3 If, as we 

Ceremony, 22 Report ( 1904 ) , Bureau of American Ethnology, and 
The Study of Indian Music quoted supra; James Mooney, The 
Ghost-Dance Religion, 14 Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Part II, 
1896. Excellent pieces of work are " Hopi Songs " and " Zuni Melo- 
dies/' by B. I. Gilman, published respectively in the Journal of 
American Ethnology and Archceology, vol. I, 1891, and vol. v, 1908, 
but nothing is said in these regarding the composition or presenta- 
tion of the songs recorded. Many references are cited later, es- 
pecially books, studies, or special articles dealing with South Amer- 
ican, African, and Australian tribes. 

3 See F. B. Gummere, The Beginnings of Poetry, J901, and The 
Popular Ballad, 1907. See also Primitive Poetry and the Ballad, 
Modern Philology, I, 1904. 



4 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETEY 

are told, prehistoric song-modes are reflected in the folk- 
dances and festal throngs of mediaeval peasants and vil- 
lagers, or in the singing of nineteenth-century Corsican 
field laborers, Styrian threshers, Gascon vintage choruses, 
Italian country-folk, Silesian peasants, Faroe Island fish- 
ermen, and harvest-field songs everywhere, 4 they ought 
to be reflected yet more in the song-modes of the American 
Indians. 



I ■" COMMUNAL " AUTHORSHIP ATTO OWNERSHIP 

At the present time the accepted or orthodox view, i. e., 
among literary critics, hardly among anthropologists, con- 
cerning the authorship of primitive song and the " begin- 
nings of poetry " is reflected in such passages as the fol- 
lowing, from a recent work by Professor Richard Green 
Moulton : 5 

The primary element of literary form is the ballad dance. This 
is the union of verse with musical accompaniment and dancing; 
the dancing being, not exactly what the words suggest to modern 
ears, but the imitative and suggestive action of which an orator's 
gestures are the nearest survival. Literature, where it first ap- 
pears spontaneously, takes this form : a theme or story is at once 
versified, accompanied with music, and suggested in action. 
When the Israelites triumphed at the Red Sea, Miriam " took 
a timbrel in her hands; and all the women went out after her 
with timbrels and dances." This was a ballad dance ; it was a 
more elaborate example of the same when David, at the inaugura- 
tion of Jerusalem, " danced before the Lord with all his might." 
And writers who deal with literary origins offer abundant illus- 

4 Ibid. 

s The Modem Study of Literature, Chicago, 1915. From Chapter I, 
"The Elements of Literary Form." 



COMMUNAL AUTHOKSHIP 5 

trations of folk-dances among the most diverse peoples in an 
early stage of civilization. 

In this passage and in his diagrams showing literary 
evolution 6 Professor Monlton gives the " ballad dance " 
the initial position in the chronology of musical and liter- 
ary history, characterizing it as the " primitive literary 
form " — the ballad dance, moreover, according to the 
usual view, of the throng. Individual composition of and 
proprietorship in song is of secondary development; and 
when this stage has been reached, " folk-song " has passed 
into " artistry." 

The following passages make clear the position of Pro- 
fessor A. S. Mackenzie 7 : " Inasmuch as dancing is the 
most spontaneous of all the arts, it may be regarded as 
the earliest. Linked with inarticulate vocal cries it fell 
under the spell of measure or order, and slowly grew 
more rational " . . . " impulsive motions and sounds 
prepare the way for voluntary movements of the body and 

6 Ibid., pp. 18, 26. 

7 The Evolution of Literature, 1911. For the quotations cited, see 
pp. 131, 147, 261, 263. 

This view of the priority of the dance and of the dance song is 
found in Franz Bohme's Geschichte des Tanzes im Deutschland 
(1888) : " Tanzlieder waren die ersten Lieder," " Beim Tanze wurden 
die altesten epischen Dichtungen (erzahlende Volkslieder) ge- 
sungen," " Die al teste Poesie eines jeden Volkes ist eine Verbindung 
von Tanz, Spiel und Gesang." 

Karl Biicher, Arbeit und Rhythmus (2nd ed. 1899), finds.the origin 
of poetry in labor songs, and assigns to primitive labor the role so 
often assigned to the primitive dance: ". . . es ist die energische, 
rhythmische Korperbewegung, die zur Entstehung der Poesie 
gefuhrt hat, insbesondere diejenige Bewegung, welche wir Arbeit 
nennen. Es gilt dies aber ebensowohl von der formellen als der 
materiellen Seite der Poesie," p. 306. 



6 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETEY 

the voice. When these are controlled by rhythm, the 
rudiments of dancing and music have emerged, though 
they remain inseparable for many a year " ..." It was 
such extemporaneous efforts [tribal improvisation] that 
gave rise to the first verses which bear any resemblance to 
what we are accustomed to call poetry. The first artist 
served his apprenticeship as an improviser under festal 
stimulus, before he learned to compose more worthy verse 
in retirement. Not only among the higher tribes but even 
in Europe the primitive custom of extemporizing coexists 
alongside the more advanced custom of composing with 
deliberation apart from the throng " . . . " His [prim- 
itive man's] humble verse is in constant dependence upon 
the collective emotion produced by the choric dance "... 
" Apart from the festal dance it is difficult to find any 
definite traces either of poetic sources or of poetic forms, 
and we are driven to the conclusion that the earliest art 
impulse is essentially collective rather than individual, 
objective rather than subjective. No doubt primitive 
improvisation is the halting keynote of individuality, but 
it is speedily lost in the ethnic chorus. In vain do we 
look here for that poetry which is born of meditation in 
solitude and deliberately framed into metrical perfection." 
Last, let some passages from Professor Gummere's 
The Beginnings of Poetry be cited. Professor Gummere 
was recognized as a leading scholar of the subject, and in 
view of his learning, ability, and his years of attention 
to the matter, his words may well have especial weight. 
Here are some characteristic sentences 8 : " Poetry begins 

*The Beginnings of Poetry (1901), pp. 139, 321, 106, 212, 13, 93, 
etc. Later, by Professor Gummere,. are The Popular Ballad (1907), 
and the chapter on Ballads in the Cambridge History of English 



COMMUNAL AUTHOKSHIP 7 

with the impersonal, with communal emotion." " The 
ballad is a song made in the dance, and so by the dance. 
. . . The communal dance is the real source of the song." 
" The earliest ' muse ' was the rhythm of the throng." 
" Festal throngs, not a poet's solitude, are the birthplace of 
poetry." " Overwhelming evidence shows all primitive 
poetical expression of emotion to have been collective." 
Let two quotations of greater length be given : 

As the savage laureate slips from the singing, dancing crowd, 
which turns audience for the nonce, and gives his short improvisa- 
tion, only to yield to the refrain of the chorus, so the actual 
habit of individual composition and performance has sprung 
from the choral composition and performance. The improvisa- 
tions and the recitative are short deviations from the main road, 
beginnings of artistry, which will one day become journeys of 
the solitary singer over pathless hills of song, those " wanderings 
of thought " which Sophocles has noted ; and the curve of evolu- 
tion in the artist's course can show how rapidly and how far 
this progress has been made. But the relation must not be re- 
versed; and if any fact seems established for primitive life, it is 
the precedence of choral song and dance. . . . 

Here it is enough to show that rhythmical verse came directly 
from choral song, and that neither the choral song, nor any 
regular song, could have come from the recitative. 

It is natural for one person to speak, or even to sing, and for 
ninety-nine persons to listen. It is also natural for a hundred 
persons, under strong emotion, to shout, sing, dance, in concert 
and as a throng, not as a matter of active and passive, of give 
and take, but in common consent of expression. The second 
situation . . . must have preceded. 9 

Literature (1908); but these deal primarily with the English and 
Scottish ballads, not with the origins of poetry. 

a Pp. 80, 81. In Professor Gummere's article on "The Ballad and 
Communal Poetry," Child Memorial volume (Harvard Studies and 
Notes, etc., 1896), he said: "Spontaneous composition in a danc- 



8 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETRY 

He reminds us again in an article on Folk-Song 10 that 
" It is very important to remember that primitive man 
regarded song as a momentary and spontaneous thing." 

To come farther down in the history of song, a favorite 
picture with Professor Gummere is of European peasant 
folk in the Middle Ages, improvising " ballads " in song 
and dance, and thus — by virtue of the simple homogene- 
ous character of their life — establishing a type of balladry 
superior to, and having more vitality than, anything of 

ing multitude — all singing, all dancing, and all able on occasion 
to improvise — is a fact of primitive poetry about which we may 
be as certain as such questions allow us to be certain. Behind 
individuals stands the human horde. . . . An insistent echo of this 
throng . . . greets us from the ballads." He added communal 
poetry to Wundt's {Ueber Ziele und Wege der Volkerpsychologie) 
three products of the communal mind, — speech, myth, and custom. 
" Universality of the poetic gift among inferior races, spontaneity 
or improvisation under communal conditions, the history of refrain 
and chorus, the early relation of narrative songs to the dance " [the 
italics are added] are facts so well established that " it is no absur- 
dity to insist on the origin of poetry under communal and not 
under artistic conditions." More difficulty lies in " the assertion 
of simultaneous composition. Yet this difficulty is more apparent 
than real." 

Grosse, Anfdnge der Kunst (1894), ch. ix, finds the poetry of 
primitive peoples to be egoistic in inspiration, and gives examples 
of lyrics of various types which point to this. " Im Allgemeinen 
tragt die Lyrik der Jagervolker einen durchaus egoistischen Cha- 
rakter. Der Dichter besingt seine personlichen Leiden und Freu- 
den; das Schicksal seiner Mitmenschen entlockt ihm nur selten 
einen Ton." For Professor Gummere's discussion and rejection of 
Grosse's view, see The Beginnings of Poetry, pp. 381 ff. 

For a present-day German view of primitive poetry, see Erich 
Schmidt, " Die Anf ange der Literatur," Die Kultur der Gegenwart, 
Leipzig (1906), 1, pp. 1-27. For a French view, see A. van Gennep, 
La Formation des Legendes, Paris (1910), pp. 210-211. 

io In Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature. 



COMMUNAL AUTHOKSHIP 9 

the kind having its origin in individual authorship. It is 
a long gap, that between aboriginal song and dance and 
the English and Scottish ballads of the fifteenth and six- 
teenth centuries; yet it is a gap we are asked to bridge. 
Undoubtedly, if that " most ancient of creative processes," 
the communal throng chorally creating its song from the 
festal dance, existed among the mediaeval peasants and 
produced work of the high value of the English and Scot- 
tish ballads, the same " ancient method " should prevail 
among that yet more primitive people, the American 
Indians. 

That it is an absurd chronology which assumes that in- 
dividuals have choral utterance before they are lyrically 
articulate as individuals, seems — extraordinarily 
enough — to have little weight with theorists of this school. 
Did primitive man sing, dance, and compose in a throng, 
while he was yet unable to do so as an individual ? We 
are asked to believe this. Are we to assume that he was 
inarticulate and without creative gift till suddenly he 
participated in some festal celebration and these gifts be- 
came his ? Professor Gummere cites as evidence, so im- 
portant as to deserve italics, Dr. Paul Ehrenreich's state- 
ment concerning the Botocudos of South America, " They 
never sing without dancing, never dance without singing, 
and have hut one word to express both song and dance/' u 
Much the same thing, save as regards limitations of vo- 
cabulary, might have been said by a traveller among the 
ancient Greeks, with whom dance was generally insepar- 
able from music and verse. Nothing is proved by this 

n Ueoer die Botocuden, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, xix, pp. 30 ff. 
Quoted in The Beginnings of Poetry, p. 95; also Democracy and 
Poetry (1911), pp. 231 ff. See note 45, infra, p. 26. 



10 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETEY 

characteristic of the Botocudos, if it is a characteristic; 
any more than anything is proved by the fact that the far 
more aboriginal Akkas of South Africa 12 have songless 
dances, or by the fact that danceless songs — a circum- 
stance hard to fit into the accepted view of primitive poetry 
— have been reported among the Andamanese, the Austral- 
ians, the Maori of New Zealand, Semang of Malaysia, 
Seri of Mexico, and Eskimo of the Arctic, as well as among 
practically all North American tribes that have been 
studied in detail. According to the testimony of Miss 
Eletcher, there are many songs sung by Indian societies in 
which there is no dancing. 13 Such songs are spoken of as 
" Best Songs." In the account quoted at the opening of 
this volume, of the simultaneous singing of individual 
songs by the members of a certain society as the clos- 
ing act of a meeting, the members are sitting as they 
sing. Their individual songs are, in a sense, creden- 
tials of membership. Each song is strictly individual, and 
refers to a personal experience. " In most societies,' 7 says 
Miss Eletcher, " as well as in the ceremonies of the tribe, 
the songs are led by a choir, or by persons officially ap- 

12 Some references for the Akkas are G. Burrows, On the Natives 
of the Upper Welle District of the Belgian Congo, Journal of the 
Anthropological Institute (1889), xxvni; Sir H. James, Geographi- 
cal Journal, xvn, p. 40, 1906; G. A. Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, 
N. Y., 1874, vol. II; H. von Wissmann, Meine Zweite Durchquerung 
Aequatorial-Afrikas, Frankfort, 1890; H. M. Stanley, In Darkest 
Africa, N. Y., 1891; H. Schlichter, Pygmy Tribes of Africa, 8cot. 
Geog. Mag., viii, etc. 

13 In a letter to the author. 

Among the Brazilian cannibal tribe, the Boros, the tribesman 
with a grievance enters the principal dance, stalks to a position in 
sight of all, and chants his solo standing stock still, with up- 
raised hand. T. Whiffen, The North-West Amazons (1915), p. 196. 



COMMUNAL AUTHOESHIP 11 

pointed as leaders. The members of the society frequently 
join in the song. I do not recall anyone performing a 
dramatic dance and singing at the same time. While all 
dances are accompanied by song, many songs are sung 
without dancing. Some of the dancing is not violent in 
action, the movement is merely rhythm and swaying. In 
such dances, the dancers sing as they move. Occasionally, 
as I recall, the song for a dance which is dramatic and 
vigorous, bringing all the body into play, will be sung by 
the choir (men and women seated about the drum). Some 
of the people sitting and watching the dance may clap their 
hands in rhythm with the drum. This, however, is play- 
fulness by some privileged person and indicates enjoy- 
ment." 

Surely the individual does everything he can do, or 
chooses to do, as an individual, before, or contemporary 
with, his ability to do the same as a member of a throng. 
The testimonies of travellers as to communal singing and 
dancing among savage or peasant communities prove noth- 
ing at all as to origins ; certainly they do not prove that 
collective poetic feeling and authorship preceded individ- 
ual feeling and authorship. Testimonies as to tribal song 
ought to outnumber testimonies as to individual song, 
since the spectator is chiefly interested in tribal ways. 
He would be struck by and record tribal ceremonies, rit- 
uals, and songs, where individual singing would escape 
attention or seem unimportant. Besides, choruses would 
no doubt be more numerous than solos, and bound up with 
more important occasions ; much as solo dances are infre- 
quent, among savage tribes, compared to mass dancing. 
To reiterate, however, testimony no matter how great its 
quantity, that savage peoples sing and dance in throngs, 



12 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETEY 

or improvise while doing so, proves nothing as to the pri- 
ority of communal over individual feeling, authorship, 
and ownership. 

The evidence concerning primitive song which should 
have greatest weight is not that of travellers and explorers, 
interested chiefly in other things than song, but that of 
special scholars, who have recorded and studied avail- 
able material with a view to its nature, its composition, and 
its vitality. Among these there seems to be neither doubt 
nor divergence of opinion ; and their testimony is at var- 
iance with the now established tradition of the literary his- 
torian. The general social inspiration of song is not to 
be denied. In a broad sense, all art is a social phenome- 
non — the romanticists to the contrary. Song is mainly a 
social thing at the present time, and it was yet more pre- 
vailingly social among our remote ancestors. Rather is 
it' proposed to subject to examination the following specific 
hypotheses : the inseparableness of primitive dance, music, 
and song; the simultaneous mass-composition of primitive 
song; mass-ownership of primitive song; the narrative 
character of primitive song ; the non-existence of the prim- 
itive artist. Ear from certain, also, is the hypothesis of 
the birth of rhythmic or musical utterance from rhythmic 
action, if this be conceived as a form of limb or bodily 
motion. 

In citations of illustrative material, primary use is 
made of American Indian material. It is this material, 
on the whole, which has been collected and studied most 
carefully. Coming as it does from homogenous primitive 
peoples, in the tribal state, having one standard of life, 
and as yet unaffected by the poetic modes of civilization, 
it should have importance for the questions under dis- 



INDIVIDUAL AUTHOKSHIP 13 

cussion. Parallel material — of which liberal use is made 
— available from South America, Africa, Australia, and 
Oceania, yields, however, the same evidence. 

II INDIVIDUAL AUTHORSHIP AND OWNERSHIP 

That American Indian song is of individual composi- 
tion, not the product of group improvisation, much evi- 
dence may be brought to support. It will be seen also, 
from the illustrative material cited, that the Indian has a 
feeling of private ownership in his song. It would be rea- 
sonable, therefore, to assume that, as far back as we can 
go in primitive society, there should be a sense of individ- 
ual skill in song-making, as of individual skill in running, 
hurling a dart, leaping, or any other human activities. 
There is something absurd in singling out musical utter- 
ance as the one form of expression having only social origin 
or social existence. 

A large number of Indian songs are said to have come 
into the mind of the Indian when he was in a dream or a 
trance (surely not a "communal" form of experience!). 

Many of the Chippewa songs, for example, are classified 
as " dream songs." Says Miss Densmore : 14 

Many Indian songs are intended to exert a strong mental in- 
fluence, and dream songs are supposed to have this power in 
greater degree than any others. The supernatural is very real 
to the Indian. He puts himself in communication with it by fast- 
ing or by physical suffering. While his body is thus subordinated 
to his mind a song occurs to him. In after years he believes that 

14 Frances Densmore, Chippewa Music, I, n. Bulletin 45 (1910) 
and 53 (1913), Bureau of American Ethnology. For examples see 
i, pp. 118 ff., ii, pp. 37 ff. Also Teton Sioux Music, Bulletin 61 
(1918), p. 60. 



14 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETRY 

by singing this song he can recall the condition under which it 
came to him — a condition of direct communication with the 
supernatural. 15 

It is said that in the old days all the important songs were 
" composed in dreams/' and it is readily understood that the man 
who sought a dream desired power superior to that he possessed. 
A song usually came to a man in his " dream " ; he sang this song 
in the time of danger or necessity in the belief that by so doing he 
made more potent the supernatural aid vouchsafed to him in the 
dream. Songs composed, or received, in this manner were used 
on the warpath, in the practice of medicine, and in any serious 
undertaking of life. 16 

Compare also : " There is no limit to the number of 
these [ghost-dance songs] as every trance at every dance 
produces a new one, the trance subject after regaining 
consciousness embodying his experience in the spirit 
world in the form of a song, which is sung at the next 
dance and succeeding performance until superseded by 
other songs originating in the same way. Thus a single 
dance may easily result in twenty or thirty new songs." 17 
Testimony from Australia is contributed by A. W. How- 
itt : " In the tribes with which I have acquaintance, I 
find it to be a common belief that the songs, using that 
word in its widest meaning, as including all kinds of 
aboriginal poetry, are obtained by the bards from the 
spirits of the deceased, usually of their kindred, during 
sleep, in dreams. . . . The Birraark professed to receive 
his poetic inspiration from the Mrarts, as well as the ac- 
companying dances, which he was supposed to have seen 

mloid., i, p. 118. 

is Ibid., ii, p. 16. 

17 James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion, 14 report Bureau 
of Ethnology, Part II (1896), p. 952. Many trance songs from 
many tribes are given, pp. 953-1101. 



INDIVIDUAL AUTHORSHIP 15 

first in ghost land. ... In the Narrang-ga tribe there are 
old men who profess to learn songs and dances from de- 
parted spirits. These men are called Gurildras. ... In 
the Yuin tribe some men received their songs in dreams, 
others when waking. " Specimen songs are cited. 18 

There is also abundant testimony as to private owner- 
ship. The following is from Le Jeune's Relation (1636) : 
" Let us begin with the feasts of the Savages. They have 
one for war. At this they sing and dance in turn, accord- 
ing to age; if the younger ones begin, the old men pity 
them for exposing themselves to the ridicule of others. 
Each has his own song, that another dare not sing lest he 
give offense. For this very reason they sometimes strike 
up a tune that belongs to their enemies to aggravate 
them." 19 Of the Melanesians of British New Guinea we 
are told that their songs and dances are " strictly copy- 
right." " The only legitimate manner for people to ob- 
tain the right to a dance or song not their own was to buy 
it." 20 Private ownership of songs prevails also among 
the American Indians. 

18 The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, London (1904), p. 
416. 

is Jesuit Relations, Thwaites ed. Vol. ix, p. 111. 

20 C. G. Seligman, The Melanesians of British New Guinea (1910), 
p. 151. George Browne, Melanesians and Polynesians (1910) p. 
451. 

There are many testimonies to the existence of other primitive 
artists beside the poet. Among the primitive Kwai or Bushmen, a 
strong sense of individual talent in artistry is said to exist. • " The 
old Bushmen assert that the productions of an artist were always 
respected as long as any recollection of him was preserved in his 
tribe: during this period no one, however daring, would attempt to 
deface his paintings by placing others over them. But when his 
memory was forgotten, some aspirant after artistic fame appro- 
priated the limited rock surface of the shelter, adapted for such a 



16 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETKY 

The Chippewa have no songs which are the exclusive property 
of families or clans. Any young man may learn his father's 
songs, for example, by giving him the customary gift of tobacco, 
but he does not inherit the right to sing such songs, nor does 
his father force him to learn them. 21 

We learn further that the healer combines music and 
medicine. " If a cure of the sick is desired, he frequently 
mixes and rolls a medicine after singing the song which 
will make it effective." 22 And that " The songs of a 
Chippewa doctor cannot be bought or sold." 23 

So far as the two men who heard me were concerned, the 
argument was convincing, but there lingered even with them a 
reluctance to help me with certain songs because they belonged 
to other persons. Nearly all the Indians of my acquaintance rec- 
ognize this proprietary interest in songs. A has no right to sing 
B's songs ; B did not compose them, but they came down to him 
through his family, or from some chief who fought him, and 
B alone should say whether they might be given another. 24 

Miss Fletcher writes of the Omaha: 

It would be a mistake to fancy that songs floated indiscrim- 
inately about among the Indians, and could be picked up here 
and there by any chance observer. Every song had originally 

display of talent, for his own performances-, and unceremoniously 
painted over the efforts of those who preceded him. If we calcu- 
late* that the memory of any artist would be preserved among his 
people for at least three generations, as every Bushman tribe prided 
itself on and boasted of the wall decorations of its chief cave, it 
would give a probable antiquity of about five hundred years to the 
oldest found in the Invani rock shelter." G. W. Stow, The Native 
Races of South Africa (1905), pp. 26, 27. 

21 Chippewa Music, I, p. 2. 

22 Ibid., I, p. 20 

23 Ibid., p. 119. See also Teton Sioux Music, p. 60. 
2* Burton, American* Primitive' Music, p. 118. 



INDIVIDUAL AUTHORSHIP 17 

its owner. It belonged either to a society, secular or religious, to 
a certain clan or political organization, to a particular rite or 
ceremony, or to some individual. . . . The right to sing a song 
which belonged to an individual could be purchased, the person 
buying the song being taught it by the owner. 

These beliefs and customs among the Indians have made it 
possible to preserve their songs without change from one genera- 
tion to another. Many curious and interesting proofs of accuracy 
of transmittal have come to my knowledge during the past twenty 
years, while studying these primitive melodies. . . . Close and 
continued observation has revealed that the Indian, when he sings, 
is not concerned with the making of a musical presentation to 
his audience. He is simply pouring out his feelings, regardless 
of artistic effects. To him. music is subjective: it is the vehicle 
of communication between him and the object of his desire. 25 

Now a few testimonies as to individual authorship. A 
first instance is from the songs of the Omaha. For the 
complete story of this song, the reader is referred to the 
account of Miss Fletcher: 

At length the Leader stood up and said, " We have made peace, 
we have come in good faith, we will go forward, and Wa-kon'-da 
shall decide the issue." Then he struck up this song and led the 
way; and as the men and women followed, they caught the tune, 
and all sang it as they came near the Sioux village. 26 

25 Alice C. Fletcher, The Indian in Story and Song, pp. 115-117. 

26 Ibid., p. 22. The following passage from A Study of Omaha 
Indian Music, p. 25, by Alice 0. Fletcher and Francis LaFlesche, 
also throws light on the composition of certain Indian songs: 

Like the Poo-g'-thun, the Hae-thu-ska preserved the history of 
its members in its songs; when a brave deed was performed, the 
society decided whether it should be celebrated and without this 
dictate no man would dare permit a song to be composed in his 
honor. When a favorable decision was given, the* task of composing 
the song devolved upon some man with musical talent. It has 
happened that the name of a man long dead has given place in a 
popular song to that of a modern warrior; this could only be done 



18 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETKY 

Two instances from the Pawnee illustrate perfectly the 
poet musing in solitude on the meaning of nature, — like 
some Pawnee Wordsworth. 

The " Song of the Bird's Nest " commemorates the story 
of a man who came upon a bird's nest in the grass : 

He paused to look at the little nest tucked away so snug and 
warm, and noted that it held six eggs and that a peeping sound 
came from some of them. While he watched, one moved and soon 
a tiny bill pushed through the shell uttering a shrill cry. At once 
the parent birds answered and he looked up to see. where they 
were. They were not far off; they were flying about in search 
of food, chirping the while to each other and now and then calling 
to the little ones in the nest. . . . After many days he desired 
to see the nest again. So he went to the place where he had 
found it and there it was as safe as when he had left it. But a 
change had taken place. It was now full to overflowing with 
little birds, who were stretching their wings, balancing on their 
little legs and making ready to fly, while the parents with en- 
couraging calls were coaxing the fledglings to venture forth. 
" Ah ! " said the man, " if my people would only learn of the 
birds, and like them, care for their young and provide for their 
future, homes would be full and happy, and our tribe strong 
and prosperous." 

When this man became a priest, he told the story of the bird's 
nest and sang its song; and so it has come down to us as from 
the days of our fathers. 27 

The " Song of the Wren " was made by a priest who 
noted that the wren, the smallest and least powerful of -the 

by the consent of the society, which was seldom given, as the 
Omahas were averse to letting the memory of a brave man die, 
. . . the songs were transmitted from one generation to another with 
care, as was also the story of the deeds the songs commemorated. 
27 The Hako, A Pawnee Ceremony, in 22nd Report, Bureau of 
American Ethnology, Part II, p. 170. See also The Indian in Story 
and Song, p. 32, and Frances Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, p. 59. 



INDIVIDUAL AUTHOKSHIP 19 

birds, excelled them all in the fervor of its song. " Here," 
he thought, " is a teaching for my people. Everyone can 
he happy ; even the most insignificant can have his song of 
thanks." 

So he [the priest] made the story of the wren and sang it; 
and it has been handed down from that day, — a day so long 
ago no man can remember the time. 28 

Instances testifying to individual not communal compo- 
sition of song among the Chippewa are no less easily cited. 

The following explanation of a certain song was given 
by an Indian : 

The song belonged to a certain man who sang it in the dances 
which were held before going to war. When this man was a boy 
he had a dream and in his dream he heard the trees singing as 
though they were alive: they sang that they were afraid of noth- 
ing except being blown down by the wind. When the boy 
awoke he made up this song, in which he repeats what he heard 
the trees say. The true meaning of the words is that there is 
no more chance of his being defeated on the warpath than there 
is that a tree will be blown down by the wind. 29 

The singer stated that he composed this song himself when he 
was a child. The circumstances were as follows : His mother had 
gone to a neighbor's, leaving him alone in the wigwam. He 
became very much afraid of the owl, which is the particular 
terror of all small Indians, and sang this song. It was just after 
sugar making and the wigwams were placed together beside the 
lake. The people in the other wigwams heard his little song. 
The melody was entirely new and it attracted them so that they 
learned it as he sang. The men took it up and used it in their 
moccasin games. For many years it was used in this way, 

28 The Hako, pp. 171-172. See also The Indian in Story and 
Song, p. 56. 

29 Chippewa Music, I, p. 126, No. 112: "Song of the Trees." 



20 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETRY 

but lie was always given the credit of its composition. 30 
The rhythm of this song is peculiarly energizing, and when once 
established would undoubtedly have a beneficial physical effect. 
The surprising feature of this case, however, is that the song is 
said to have been composed and the rhythm created by the sick 
man himself. 31 

There are many instances of individual artistry among 
the Australians : — 

" The makers of Australian songs, or of the combined songs 
and dances, are the poets, or bards, of the tribe, and are held in 
great esteem. Their names are known in the neighboring tribes, 
and their songs are carried from tribe to tribe, until the very 
meaning of the words is lost, as well as the original source of 
the song. It is hard to say how far and how long such a song 
m.a,j travel in the course of time over the Australian continent." 32 

It is interesting to note that many Indian songs are 
composed by women. The following are instances: 

. . . They [the women] would gather in groups at the lodge 
of the Leader of the war party, and in the hearing of his family 
would sing a We' -ton song, which should carry straight to the 
far-away warriors and help them to win the battle . . . The 

^Ibid., p. 135, No. 121: "I am afraid of the Owl." 
si Ibid., p. 95, No. 79: "Healing Song." Compare also Franz 
Boas on The Central Eskimo, Report Bureau of Ethnology, 1884- 
1885, p. 649: "Besides these old songs and tales there are a great 
number of new ones, and, indeed, almost every man has his own 
tune and his own song. A few of these become great favorites 
among the Eskimo and are sung like our popular songs." 

32 A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, 
London (1904), p. 414. See also Kurburu's song, composed and sung 
by a bard called Kurburu, p. 420. Howitt refers to one man who 
composed when tossing about on the waves in a boat — not a very 
" communal " method of composition. For other instances of in- 
dividual composition see George Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians 
(1910), p. 423, C. G. Seligman, The Melanesians of British New 
Guinea (1910), pp. 152, 153, etc. 



INDIVIDUAL AUTHORSHIP 21 

We'-ton song here given was composed by a Dakota woman. 33 
It is said that the following [Chippewa] song was composed 
and sung on the field of battle by a woman Darned Omiskwa'- 
wegijigo'kwe ("woman of the red sky"), the wife of the leader, 
who went with him into the fight singing, dancing, and urging 
him on. At last she saw him kill a Sioux. Full of the fire 
of battle, she longed to play a man's part and scalp the slain. 
Custom forbade that Chippewa women use the scalping knife, 
although they carried the scalps in the victory dance. 

Song 
at that time 
if I had been a man 
truly 
a man 
I would have seized. 34 

Odjib'we [a Chippewa] stated that his wife's brother was killed 
by the Sioux and that he organized a war party in return. The 
purpose of the expedition was to attack a certain Sioux village 
located on an island in Sauk river, but before reaching the village, 
the Chippewa met a war party of Sioux, which they pursued, 
killing one man. There were nine Chippewa in Odjib'we's party; 
not one was killed. They returned home at once and Odjib'we 
presented the Sioux scalp to his wife Dekum ("across") who 
held it aloft in the victory dance as she sung the following song. 

Odjib'we 
our brother 
brings back. 35 

33 Fletcher, Indian Story and Song, Weton Song, pp. 81, 85. 

So also in the Omaha tribe : " We'tonwaan is an old and Untrans- 
latable word used to designate a class of songs composed by women 
and sung exclusively by them." — Fletcher and LaFlesche, The 
Omaha Tribe, 27th Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 421 ; 
cf. pp. 320-323 for other types of women's songs. 

34 Chippewa Music, n, p. Ill, No. 31: "If I Had Been a Man." 
mloid., p. 121, No. 39: Song of Dekum. Several other songs 

composed by Dekum are given. 



22 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETRY 

Thomas Whiffen quotes a song made by a Boro chief- 
tain's daughter, a complaint of her treatment by her own 
tribe, having the iterative lines — 

The chief's daughter was lost in the bush 
And no one came to find the spoor. 36 

Much farther evidence of the composition of songs by 
women might be cited. 37 

Excellent testimony on the questions of individual com- 
position, the refrain, and the relation of the composer to 
the chorus comes from the Andamese. 38 " When an An- 
damese wishes to make a new song he waits till he feels 
inspired to do so, and will then, when alone and engaged 
on some occupation, sing to himself till he has hit on a 

36 The North-West Amazons (1915), p. 197. 

37 Compare Franz Boas, Chinook Lays, p. 224, Journal of American 
Folk-Lore, 1888: "The greater part of those I have collected were 
composed by women." He adds that for a greater number of tunes 
the " text is only a meaningless burden." For songs of the Kiowa 
composed by a woman, see J. W. Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion, 
14 Eeport, Bureau of Ethnology, Part II, 1896, pp. 1083, 1085, etc. 
See also an article of interest by Alexander F. Chamberlain, Primi- 
tive Woman as Poet, Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. xvi 
(1903), pp. 207 ff.; Bucher, Arbeit und Rhythmus (1899), ch. viii, 
p. 339, " Frauenarbeit und Frauendichtung " ; J. C. Andersen, Maori 
Life in Ao-Tea (1907), p. 500. 

K. H. Codrington writes of the Melanesians (The Melanesians: 
Studies in Their Anthropology and Folk-Lore, Oxford, 1891, p. 
334): "A poet or poetess more or less distinguished is probably 
found in every considerable village throughout the islands; when 
some remarkable event occurs, the launching of a canoe, a visit of 
strangers, or a feast, song-makers are engaged to celebrate it and 
rewarded," etc. 

ss Pointed out by Professor F. N. Scott, Modern Language Notes, 
April 1918. See M. V. Porter, Notes on the Language of the South 
Andaman Group of Tribes, Calcutta (1898), p. 67. 



INDIVIDUAL ATTTHOKSHIP 23 

solo and refrain which takes his fancy, and then improves 
it to his taste. His composition would ordinarily refer to 
some recent occurrence by which he had been affected," 
" At a dance the soloist stands at the dancing-board and 
(often in a falsetto voice) sings his solo and the refrain. 
(If he has sung the solo in falsetto, his voice will drop 
an octave at the refrain). If the chorus grasp the re- 
frain at once, they sing it ; if they do not grasp it, the solo- 
ist will repeat it two or three times till the chorus is able 
to take it up.' 7 "The solo is sung amid general silence, 
and the dance commences with the refrain, being also 
accompanied by a clapping of hands and thighs, and the 
stamping of the soloist's foot on the sounding board." 

The preceding are specimen testimonies. They might 
be added to indefinitely from many sources. In accounts 
of African, Australian, or South American tribes, as well 
as of the North American Indians, one comes invariably 
upon the instance of the individual who makes a song — 
very often in solitude — and the song is recognized a^ 
his. The great mass of primitive songs sung in com- 
munal or other gatherings are either portions of religious 
rituals, didactic, or, still oftener, magical in nature. Far 
from being improvised for the occasion, they are sedu- 
lously repeated verbatim, the least deviation from the rote 
form being the occasion, not infrequently, of an entire 
recommencement of the ceremony. Ramon Pane, gives the 
following testimony concerning the Haytians : 39 " They 
have all the superstitions reduced into old songs, and are 
directed by them, as the Moors by the Alcoran. When 
they sing these, they play on an instrument made of wood. 
... To that music they sing those songs they have got 

39 In Ferdinand Columbus' s< Life of Christopher Colu.mous, ch, 14. 



24 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETEY 

by heart. The chief men play on it who learn it from 
their infancy, and so sing it according to their custom." 
Substantially the same account is given by Peter Martyr 
d'Anghrera : 40 " When the Spanish asked whoever had 
infected them with this mass of ridiculous beliefs, the 
natives replied that they received them from their an- 
cestors, and that they had been preserved from time im- 
memorial in poems which only the sons of chiefs were al- 
lowed to learn. These poems are learned by heart, for they 
have no writing, and on feast days the sons of chiefs sing 
them to the people in the form of sacred chants." Thomas 
Whiffen, writing of the Amazonians, 41 speaks of " the 
traditional songs of the tribes which are sacred and un- 
changeable." " They are the songs that their fathers sang, 
and one can find no evidence of the amendation or emenda- 
tion of the score on the part of their descendants." " The 
dance, like the tobacco palaver, is a dominant factor in 
tribal life. Eor it the Amazonian treasures the songs of 
his fathers-, and will master strange rhymes and words that 
for him no longer have meaning; he only knows that they 

40 Be Orbe Norn, English trans, by MacNutt, New York (1912), 
vol. i, p. 172. 

For the North American Indians, see, for example, Washington 
Matthews, Navaho Legends, Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore 
Society, 1897. An account of Navaho traditional songs is given 
pp*. 23-27. See also note 273, p. 254, Navaho Music, by Prof. J. C. 
Fillmore. Miss Fletcher gives similar testimony concerning Indian 
traditional lays. 

4i The North-West Amazons (1915), pp. 208, 190. See also The- 
odor Koch-Griinberg, Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern: Reisen in 
Nordwest Brasilien, 1903-1905. 2 vols., Berlin, 1910. "Die Texte 
die dem Aruak und dem Kobeua angehoren sind offenbar uralt und 
waren von den Sangern teilweise selbst nicht mehr zu deuten," 
vol. II, p. 131. 



INDIVIDUAL AUTHOKSHIP 25 

are the correct lines, the phrases he ought to sing at such 
functions, because they have always been sung, they are 
the words of the time-honored tribal melodies." 

Songs composed and sung by individuals and songs sung 
by groups of singers (or " throngs," if you prefer) are to 
be found in the most primitive of living tribes. That in 
the earliest stage there was group utterance only, arising 
from the folk-dance, is fanciful hypothesis. That primi- 
tive song is of group composition or collaboration, not in- 
dividual composition, is quite as fanciful. Again, as far 
back as we can go in the genesis of song-craft, there are 
impromptu songs, the spontaneous utterance of present 
emotion, and there are traditional songs, survivals or re- 
vivals of the songs of the past. 42 Among primitive peo- 
ples there is no such indissoluble connection between sing- 
ing and dancing as the italicized observations of Dr. Ehr- 
enreich are supposed to imply. Neither dancing nor song 
is invariably " choric " in savage any more than in civil- 
ized society. Solo dancing, for example, has been reported 
among the Semang of Perak, the Kwai, and the Anda- 
manese, as well as among the American Indians and num- 
erous other peoples. Koch-Grunberg mentions a dance 
among tribes north of the Japura where the men and the 
women dance together in pairs. As for solo singing, the 
citations given speak for themselves. 43 Even when the 

42 Improvisation exists among the Obongo, Australian, Fijiian, 
Andamanese, Zulu, Botocudo, and Eskimo tribes, as well as among 
the North American Indians. For an example of song and dance 
improvisation constituting a sort of game, see Whiffen, The North- 
west Amazons, p. 208. Traditional songs persist among the Kwai, 
Australian, Andamanese, Eock Vedda, Semang, Fijiian, Fuegian, 
Brazilian, and Eskimo tribes, as well as among the North American 
Indians. 

43 See also citations in note 49. 



26 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETRY 

singing is choral, it is by no means always dance-song, nor 
accompanied by dancing. The Kaffirs are said to be fond 
of singing lustily together, but, if we may trust the obser- 
vation, " a Kaffir differs from an European vocalist in 
this point, namely, that he always, if possible, sits down 
when he sings." 44 Surely these recumbent Kaffirs deserve 
italics as much as Dr. Ehrenreich's Botocudos. 45 

44 J. E. Wood, Uncivilized Races of the World (Amer. ed., Hart- 
ford, 1870), p. 208. 

45 We really know very little concerning the songs of the Boto- 
cudos. Dr. Ehrenreich's section dealing with them is very short, 
and he is chiefly interested in other things than song. These are 
the specimens he cites: — Gesang beim Tanz. Chor: " Weib jung, 
stehlen nichts." Ein Weib singt: " Ich, ich will nicht (stehlen)." 
" Der Hauptling hat keine Furcht " — Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, vol. 
xix, pp. 33, 61. 

Testimony concerning the songs of other Brazilian tribes may be 
found in J. B. Steere's Narrative of a Visit to the Indian Tribes 
of the Purus River, Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 
1901, pp. 363-393. The following are songs of the Hypurinas 
( cannibals ) , and are individualistic in character : " The leaf that 
calls my lover when tied in my girdle" (Indian girl's song); "I 
have my arrows ready and wish to kill you " ; " Now no one can 
say I am not a warrior. I return victorious from the battle"; 
" I go to die, my enemy shall eat me." 

The following are some songs of the Paumari, a " humble cow- 
ardly people 1 who live in deadly fear of the Hypurinas " ; " My 
mother when I was little carried me with a strap on her back. But 
now I am a man I don't need my mother any more " ; " The Toucan 
eats fruit in the edge of my garden, and after he eats he sings " ; 
" The jaguar fought with me, and I am weary, I am weary." The 
following they call the song of the turtle : " I wander, always wan- 
der, and when I get where I want to go, I shall not stop, but still 
go on." 

Hunting songs of the Bakairi, of the Xingu river region, egoistic 
in character, are cited by Dr. Max Schmidt, Indianerstudien in 
Zentralbrasilien, Berlin, 1905, pp. 421-424. 

The " I " of these songs of South American tribes cannot always 



THE BALLAD AS AN EAKLY FOKM 27 

The conception of individual song can be shown to exist 
among the very lowest peoples. Professor Grimm ere' s be- 
lief is that human beings get together for rhythmic move- 
ment, begin to sing, and thus song is born. But the same 
savage tribes that sing in groups tell stories in which indi- 
vidual songs appear. Among the myths of the wilder 
tribes of Eastern Brazil, 46 for example, there are many in 
which the composition and singing of songs by individuals 
form important incidents. This fact shows plainly that 
the authors of these myths were perfectly familiar with 
the conception of individual composition. Granting the 
manifestations of primitive singing and dancing throngs 
which seem so decisive to many scholars, they are capable 
of quite other interpretations than those which are usually 
assigned them. 



in 

And now what truth is in the assumption that the 
ballad-dance is the germ from which emerged the three 
separate arts, poetry, music, dance ? A passage by Profes- 
sor Moulton, affirming this, has been cited, and this pas- 
sage presents without doubt, a view now widely accepted. 
The opinion is prevalent among folk-lorists and students 
of literature that since ballads come down to us by tradi- 
tion, they represent poetry in its most primitive form. 

be "racial." The context shows that, sometimes, at least, it "must 
be egoistic, as in the individualistic songs of the North American 
Indians, or in the solo songs of men or women with grievances 
among the Brazilian cannibals. See Whiffen, The North-West 
Amazons, pp. 196, 197, etc. 

46 Illustrated in Selvagem, the well-known collection of Jose 
V. Couto de Magalhaes. 



28 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETEY 

We are told that ballads can best be studied by studying 
the poetry of races least civilized. 47 

Let us ask, first, in what sense the word " ballad " is 
used by those who derive poetry from it. Does Professor 
Moulton, for example, use the word ballad in its etymologi- 
cal sense of " dance song," leaving undetermined the char- 
acter of the words, whether meaningless vocables, purely 
lyrical, or prevailingly narrative? Usually the classifica- 
tion " ballad " is employed of lyric verses having a narra- 
tive element. By " ballad " we are supposed to mean a 
narrative song, a story in verse, a short narrative told 
lyrically. It is a loose usage which permits scholars to 
use the word in the sense both of dance song and of lyrical 
narrative, in the same work; the ambiguity is unneces- 
sary. 48 If ballad means something like dance song, or 
choral dance, or folk-dance accompanied by improvisation 
and refrain, the term ballad-dance is tautological ; for all 
ballads involve dancing. One wishes for more precision. 
But this need not detain us here. 

47 Professor W. H. Hudson, for example, in An Introduction to 
the Study of Literature (1911), p. 138, speaks of the ballads as 
" poetry of primitive models." He refers to the ballad, p. 136, 
as representing " one of the earliest stages in the evolution of 
the poetic art." So Professor W. M. Hart, English Popular Ballads 

(1916), p. 51, "Ballads are the one great and significant survival 
of . . . early universal poetry." Professor Gummere assures us 

(Old English Ballads, p. lxxxiv) that "the so-called narrative lyric, 
or ballad in stricter sense, was the universal form of poetry of the 
people." 

48 In which sense, for example, does Professor G. P. Krapp ( The 
Rise of English Literary Prose, 1915, Preface) use "ballad" when 
he writes, " Poetry of primitive origins, for example, the ballad, 
often attains a finality of form which art cannot better, but not so 
with prose " ? 



THE BALLAD AS AN EARLY FORM 29 

In whichever sense the term ballad be used, it is some- 
what rash to place the ballad dance so certainly at the 
source of man's musical and poetical expression. We have 
just seen that there is individual composition and singing, 
song unaccompanied by dancing, and dance unaccom- 
panied by song, as far down in the cultural scale as we 
can go. Certainly if ballad means, as usually' it does, 
song-story, the ballad was not the earliest form of poetry; 
and primitive people never danced to ballads. The earli- 
est songs we can get track of are purely lyrical, not 
narrative. The melody is the important thing ; the words, 
few in number and sometimes meaningless, are relatively 
negligible. Moreover, these songs are on many themes, or 
have many impulses beside festal dances. There are heal- 
ers' songs, conjurers' songs, hunting songs, game-songs, 
love songs, hymns, prayers, complaints or laments, vic- 
tory songs, satires, songs of women and children, and lyrics 
of personal feeling and appeal. The lullaby is an old 
lyric form. Who cares to affirm that lullabies were un- 
known to our aboriginal ancestors? Yet the lullaby has 
nothing to do with the singing and dancing throng. Nor 
has that other very early species, the medicine man or 
healer's solos; nor have gambling or game songs, 49 or 

49 See Stewart Culin, Games of the North American Indian, 24 
Report, Bureau of Ethnology (1907), for an account of singing 
in the Moccasin or Hidden-Ball game, pp. 335 ff. Mention is made 
of solo singing among the Chippewa, the Menominee, the Miami, 
the Seneca, the Wyandot. See also Edward Sapir, Song Recitative 
in Paiute Mythology, Journal of American Folk-Lore (1910), p. 
455, vol. xxni : " Generally Indian music is of greatest significance 
when combined with the dance in ritualistic or ceremonial perform- 
ances. Nevertheless the importance of music in non-ceremonial 
acts . . . should not be minimized." 



30 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETKY 

love songs. 50 Primitive labor songs are social, but they 
do not involve dancing, though some may have a certain 
relation to it, and they are not ballads. The class that 
is nearest the real ballad, in that it is based on happenings, 
or on the composer's experiences, is not by any means 
the largest or the most important group for primitive 
song. Songs of this latter type may be suggested by some 
event, or may present some situation; but they tell no 
story in the sense of real telling. That demands length, 
elaboration, completeness, beyond primitive powers. If 
we try to fix chronology, it is most plausible to begin with 
rhythmic action and with melody. Professor Gummere 
thinks that melody is born of rhythmic action. But vocal 
action of the singing type, i. e., melody, may well be 
as instinctive in man as in birds. Action and melody 
in singing may well have come together; for song inter- 

• There are solo-singing Bantu, Zulu, Fuegian, etc., witch-doctors 
and medicine men, as well as solo- singing North American Indian 
medicine men and gamesters. See also, for instances of solo 
singing, H. A. Junod, Les Chant es et les Contes des Ba-Ronga, 
Lausanne, 1897; also G. Landtman, The Poetry of the Kiwai 
Papuans, Folk-Lore, vol. xxiv (1913); Howitt, The Native Tribes 
of South-East Australia; James Cowan, The Maoris of New Zea- 
land; E. H. Gomes, Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo, 
as " The song of mourning is among some tribes sung by a profes- 
sional wailer, generally a woman." 

50 According to Whiff en, love songs, sacred songs, and nursery 
songs do 1 not exist among the Boros, The North-West Amazons 
(1915), p. 208. But they are known among other tribes, though 
they play no conspicuous role, from the nature of things. See the 
references for primitive love songs and childhood songs in Mackenzie, 
The Evolution of Literature, pp. 140, 144, etc. They are known 
among the North-American Indians. See Frances Densmore, Teton 
Sioux Music, pp. 370 ff., 509, 492, 493 (lullaby) ; also many other 
writers on Indian song. 



THE BALLAD AS AN EAKLY FOEM 31 

prets primarily feeling, emotion, not motion. In any 
case, words came later than melody, and real narrative 
later yet. As a lyrical species, the narrative song is a late, 
not an early, poetical development. If we look at what 
certain evidence we have, primitive songs are very brief, 
the words are less important than the music, indeed they 
need hardly be present; and they rarely tell a story. 
No instances are known to me in which a primitive song 
tells a story with real elaboration or completeness. Nor 
need these songlets always have their origin in the choral 
— specifically in the improvisation and communal elabora- 
tion of a festal dance. Why, then, apply the term ballad 
to the brief and simple lyrical utterances, often nothing 
more than the repetition of a few syllables, or of one 
syllable, which — according to the evidence — make up 
the great body of primitive song? 

But it is time to bring up a few illustrations. 

First place may well be given to the words of Miss Alice 
Fletcher, who has had thirty-five years of acquaintance 
with Indian music : 

The word "song" to our ears, suggests words arranged in 
metrical form and -adapted to be " set to music," as we say. The 
native word which is translated " song " does not suggest any 
use of words. To the Indian, the music is of primal importance, 
words may or may not accompany the music. When words are 
used in a song, they are rarely employed as in a narrative, the 
sentences are not apt to be complete. In songs belonging to a 
religious ceremony the words are few and partake of a mnemonic 
character. They may refer to some symbol, may suggest the 
conception or the teaching the symbol stands for, rarely more 
than that. Vocables are frequently added to the word or words 
to eke out the musical measure. It sometimes happens that 
a song has no words at all, only vocables are used to float the 



32 THE BEGINNINGS OF POETEY 

voice. Whether vocables alone are used or used in connection 
with words, they are never a random collection of syllables. An 
examination of hundreds of songs shows that the vocables used 
fall into classes ; one class is used for songs denoting action, an- 
other class for songs of a contemplative character, and it is also 
noted that when once vocables are adapted to a song they are 
never changed but are treated as if they were actual words. 51 

She writes elsewhere to the same effect : 

In Indian song and story we come upon a time when poetry 
is not yet differentiated from story and story not yet set free 
from song. We note that the «ong clasps the story as part of its 
being, and the story itself is not fully told without the cadence 
of the song. . . . The difference between spontaneous Indian 
melodies and the compositions of modern masters would seem to 
be not one of kind but of degree. . . . Many Indian songs have 
no words at all, vocables only being used to float the voice. 52 

The investigator of Ojibway song also finds the melody 
to be more important than the words, and has nothing to 
say of an inevitable relation between dancing and song. 53 

His [the Ojibway] poetry is not only inseparable but indistin- 
guishable from music. . . . Among all civilized peoples the art 
of expression through verse is one thing, and the art of expression 
through modulated tones is quite another, linked though they 
often are by the deliberate intent of the composer, and always as- 
sociated in the popular mind; in the Ojibway conception the 
two arts are not merely linked inseparably, they are fused in 
one. . . . 

The Ojibway is more gifted in music than in poetry; he has 
wrought out a type of beautiful melody, much of it perfect in 
form; his verse, for the most part, has not emerged from the 
condition of raw material. 

51 The Study of Indian Music, 1915, pp. 231-232. 

52 Indian Story and Song, pp. 121, 124, 125. 

53 Burton, American Primitive Music, pp. 106, 172, 173. 



THE BALLAD AS AN EARLY FORM 33 

He does sing his new melody to meaningless syllables, tenta- 
tively correcting it here and there, but meantime experimenting 
with words that convey meaning; and the probability is that the 
precise sentiment of the words finally accepted is established by 
rhythmic considerations, those that fall readily into the scheme 
of accents appealing to him as the most suitable vehicle for the 
melody. 

The melody and the idea are the essential parts of a Mide song. 
Sometimes only one or two words occur in a song. . . . Many of 
the words used in a Mide song are unknown in the conversational 
Chippewa of the present time. 54 

A number of Chippewa songs, as transcribed, have no words. 
Some of these songs originally may have had words and in a 
limited number of love songs the words partake so much of the 
nature of a soliloquy that they cannot conveniently be translated 
and given with the music. The words of most of the Chippewa 
songs are few in number and suggest rather than express the 
idea of the song. Only in the love songs and in few of the 
Mide songs are the words continuous. 

Many tribes other than the North American Indians 
appear to have songs which they can no longer interpret. 
The survival in song of words the meaning of which is lost 
is world-wide. We are told of the savage tribes of New 
Guinea that " Most of the songs are without words or with 
words the meaning of which is lost." 55 Koch-Griinberg 
says that there are old dances among the Tukano with 
words no longer understood." 56 The same testimony is 

s* Frances Densmore, Chippewa Music, I (1910), pp. 14, 15, and 
II (1913.), p. 2. Similarly Washington Matthews, Journal of Ameri- 
can Folk-Lore, 1S94, p. 185, writes of traditional songs among the 
Xavahos, " One song consists almost exclusively of meaningless or 
archaic vocables. Yet not one syllable may be forgotten or mis- 
placed." 

55 Henry Newton, In Far New Guinea (1914), p. 147. 

58 Zwei Jahre unter den Indianem, etc. (1910), vol. n, p. 254. 



34 THE BEGINNINGS OE POETEY 

made concerning the Naga tribes, the Australian natives, 
the Zulu, and Brazilian tribes. 57 

Such evidence may be multiplied indefinitely. The 
brevity of Indian songs is striking. Many have few words, 
some one word, and some no words. The songs of other 
savage peoples show the same characteristic. There are 
one-word traditional poems among the African Kwai, and 
two-word traditional poems of the Botocudos and the Es- 
kimos. These are not narrative songs, and they need 
not be dance songs ; for savage peoples do not always 
dance their verses. They are not, then, " ballads." Nor 
need they have any relation to choral improvisation. 

Literary historians have dwelt too much, it seems to 
me, on the festal throng and communal improvisation 
and the folk-dance, when dealing with the " beginnings 
of poetry," until the whole subject has been thrown out 
of focus. The term ballad might well be left out of 
account altogether and reserved for the lyric species, ap- 
pearing late in literary history, the " epic in little," or 
" short narrative told lyrically " exemplified in the con- 
ventional ballad collections. If we are to mean by ballads 
narrative songs like those of the middle ages, or narrative 
songs wherever they appear, we should certainly cease 
placing the ballad at the source of primitive poetry. The 
conception of a ballad as something improvised more or 
less spontaneously by a dancing throng should be given 
up. Even savage peoples do not compose characteristically 
in that way. And even among savage peoples, the pres- 

57 T. Hodson, The Naga Tribes of Manipur (1911), p. 68; B. 
Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia 
(1899), p. 281; H. Callaway, Religious Systems of the Amazulu, 
etc. (1870) ; Whiffen, The North-West Amazons, pp. 190, 208. 



THE BALLAD AS AN EAELY FOBM 35 

ence of refrains need not " point straight to the singing 
and dancing throng." It is not proved that the ballad, 
in any sense, came first, or even that choral songs pre- 
ceded solos. It is likely enough that choral songs and 
solos co-existed from the beginning, or even that solos 
preceded, for all that can be certainly known. The as- 
sumption that group power to sing, to compose songs, and 
to dance, precedes individual power to do these things, 58 
is fatuously speculative. It rests neither on " overwhelm- 
ing evidence " nor on probability. The individual ought 
to be able to engage in rhythmic motion, to compose tunes, 
and then to evolve words for these tunes, at least as early 
as he is able to do these things along with others of his 
kind. And let it be said again that it is safer to affirm 
that the primitive lyric, whether individual or choral, is not 
the ballad but the song — more strictly, the songlet. 

58 Erich Schmidt ("Anfange der Literatur," p. 9, in Kultur der 
Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1906, i) writes: . . . schon weil keine Masse 
nur den einfachsten Satz unisona improvisieren kann und alle 
romantischen Schwarmereien von der urheberlos singenden " Volks- 
seele " eitel Dunst sind, muss sich Soridervortag und Massenaus- 
bruch sehr fruh gliedern. Einer schreit zuerst, einer singt und 
springt zuerst, die Menge macht es ihm nach, entweder treulich 
oder indem sie bei unartikulierten Refrains, bei einzelnen Worten, 
bei wiederkehrenden Satzen beharrt. 

In this connection, since it deserves to be cited somewhere, may 
be quoted a passage from von Humboldt : " The Indians pretend 
that when the araguatos [howling monkeys] fill the forests with 
their howling, there is always one that chants as leader of the 
chorus." — A. von Humboldt, Travels in the Equinoctial Regions of 
America, Bohn edition, vol. II, p. 70. 



CHAPTEE II 
THE MEDIAEVAL BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

If the ballad, whether defined as dance song or as 
narrative lyric, is not the archetypal poetic form, pre- 
serving the model of primitive song, if it did not originate, 
more specifically than other lyric verse, in the festal dance 
songs of primitive peoples, is it not, at least, to be asso- 
ciated with the dances or the dance songs of the Middle 
Ages ? Such association is customary. The primary defi- 
nition of the English ballad, in English dictionaries of the 
nineteenth century, is " dance song." The etymology of 
the name makes linkage of the ballad with the dances of 
mediaeval times practically inevitable. A few quotations 
will make clear the present state of opinion. 

The leading American writer on ballads in recent times, 
Professor E. J. Gummere, affirmed, " But there is neither 
hurry nor compact narrative in the real ballad, so named 
not because it was sung at a dance but because it was a 
dance, a dramatic situation, unchanged in bulk and plan, 
but shifting its parts in tune with these until a climax is 
attained." x According to Professor G. L. Kittredge, " It 
appears that there is no lack of characteristic traits . . . 
which justify the conjecture that the history of balladry, if 
we could follow it back in a straight line without inter- 
ruptions would lead us to a very simple condition of 

i Democracy and Poetry (1911), p. 191. 

36 



THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 37 

society, to the singing and dancing throng, to a period of 
communal composition." 2 Professor Henry Beers wrote, 
" It should never be forgotten that the ballad . . . was not 
originally a written poem but a song and dance." 3 More 
qualification characterizes the words of Professor Charles 
S. Baldwin, " They [the ballads] may have been originally 
dance songs with communal refrain." " Bride-stealing, a 
situation often told in ballads, may in some far off day 
have been half presented, half represented by a dancing 
chorus and villagers, singing one detail after another and 
iterating a common refrain." 4 

To pass from American opinion to British, that excel- 
lent ballad scholar, Professor W. P. Ker, writes, " The 
proper form of the ballads is the same as the carole, with 
narrative substance added. Anything will do for a ring 
dance, either at a wake in a churchyard or in a garden. 
... At first a love song was the favorite sort, with a 
refrain of douce amie, and so on. . . . The narrative 
ballad was most in favor where people were fondest of 
dancing. The love-song or the nonsense verses could not 
be kept up so long ; something more was wanted, and this 
was given by the story; also as the story was always 
dramatic, more or less, with different people speaking, the 
entertainment was all the better." " The old Teutonic 
narrative poetry may have grown out of a very old ballad 
custom, where the narrative element increased and grad- 

2 Kittredge and Sargent, English and Scottish Popular Ballads 
(1904), Introd. p. xxii. 

3 English Romanticism in the XVIII Century (1898), p. 270. 
Professor Beers's discussion, in this volume, of the English and Scot- 
tish ballads, their content and special qualities, is very suggestive 
and stimulating. 

4 English Mediceval Literature (1914), pp. 237, 242. 



38 POETIC ORIGINS AND THE BALLAD 

ually killed the lyric, so that recitation of a story by a 
minstrel took the place of the dancing chorus. 7 ' In the 
following passage he suggests a specific development : — 

Probably the old ballad chorus in its proper dancing form was 
going out of use in England about 1400. Barbour, a contem- 
porary of Chaucer, speaks of girls singing " ballads " " at their 
play"; Thomas Deloney in the time of Elizabeth describes the 
singing of a ballad refrain; and the game lives happily still, 
in songs of London Bridge and others. But it becomes more and 
more common for ballads to be sung or recited to an audience 
sitting still; ballads were given out by minstrels, like the min- 
strel of Chevy Chase. Sometimes ballads are found swelling 
into something like a narrative poem; such is the famous ballad 
of Adam Bell, Clim o' the Clough, and William of Cloudeslee. 5 

W. T. Young summarizes as follows : " Scholars are 
coming to the conclusion that they [the ballads] originated, 
as their refrains seem to indicate, in a song accompanied 
by dancing and a chorus, not unlike the French carole/' 6 
Mr. T. E. Henderson, a keen and sane ballad scholar, like 
Professor K'er, cannot concede that the ballad had its 
origin in individual peasant improvisation nor that it was 

s English Literature: Mediceval (1912). Home University Li- 
brary edition, pp. 159, 161, 164. It is difficult to concede that Bar- 
bour's "ballads" (probably ballades or love songs) give evidence 
bearing on the lyric-epic type now known as the traditional ballad. 
And if the Deloney " ballad refrain " survives in games and songs, 
not in ballads, it would seem to reinforce the inference (see pp. 55, 
65) that mediaeval dance songs in England and mediaeval lyric- 
epics or ballads proper were not the same species, therefore not of 
identical origin. Support is lent, not to the theory that the earlier 
dance songs developed into ballads of the Child type, but to the 
inference that the two were distinct in origin and destiny. 

s Introduction to the Study of English Literature (1914). Based 
on, and an introduction to The Cambridge History of English Liter- 
ature. 



THE NAME BALLAD 39 

the creation of rural dancing throngs, but he admits that 
it might have borne some relation to dancing of more 
aristocratic type. " This kind of ballad [the serious 
lyric-epic] for its full effectiveness as a song or recital 
called in originally the aid of a chorus, and, probably, of 
the dance," ". . . it often added to the emotional impres- 
sion by the device of the refrain sung by a chorus, and at 
one time probably danced as well as sung." Elsewhere 
he speaks of " The earlier ballads sung probably to the 
dance, or at least made to be sung with choral effect." 7 

In the following pages it is proposed to canvass the evi- 
dence for the definition of ballads as dance songs, or 
rather for the assumption of dance-song origin for ballads, 
and to make inquiry as to its validity. Particular refer- 
ence is had to the English and Scottish ballad type. 



Much of the confusion in scholarly and literary discus- 
sion of the English and Scottish ballads and their Ameri- 
can descendants or analogues, rests on ambiguous and 
contradictory usages of the word " ballad." It has been 
employed for as many lyric types as were " sonnet " and 
" ode," and it has hardly yet settled down into consistent 
application. The popular use of the word for a short 
song, often sentimental in character, or for the music for 
such a song, is clear enough; but its most recently de- 
veloped meaning of narrative song, currently employed by 
literary historians, is only now assuming initial place in 
the dictionaries. 8 It is this newly developed usage which 

7 The Ballad in Literature (1912), pp. 6, 8, 87, 95. 

8 Although the meaning narrative song gained headway in the 



40 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

has brought confusion. Eor though the shifts in meaning 
of the term " ballad " have often been noted and traced, 
clarity or consistency in its employment have not followed, 
even among the tracers. They distinguish what they 
mean by ballad clearly enough; but they lose sight of 
their own distinctions when they come to theorizing about 
their material. Within the last one hundred and fifty 
years the name has been restricted, among specialists, to 
a type of English song to which it did not belong originally, 
and a type which is not called by that name in other 
languages, save when the usage has been carried over from 
the English. 9 The etymology of " ballad " should not be 
given undue weight, since the attachment of the name to 

eighteenth century, it was not very clearly recognized in the New 
English Dictionary, 1888. The entry given fifth place is " A simple 
spirited poem in short stanzas, originally a ' ballad ' in sense 3 
[popular songs — often broadsides] in which some popular story is 
graphically narrated. (This sense is essentially modern.)" The 
New Webster International, 1910, also gives this meaning fifth 
place, but contributes clarity : " A popular kind of short narrative 
poem adapted for singing; especially a romantic poem of the kind 
characterized by simplicity of structure and impersonality of author- 
ship." In The Standard Dictionary, 1917, is entered a® the first 
meaning of the word : " A simple lyrical poem telling a story or 
legend, usually of popular origin; as the ballad of Chevy Chase." 
Here the older order of definition is reversed, recognizing the change 
established long before in usage. 

9 The Danish name for pieces of the English ballad type is folke- 
viser. The Spanish name is romances. The German usage of Bal- 
lade follows the English; German poets derived much of their bal- 
ladry from England. The name is applied to short poems in which 
the narrative element is as important as the lyrical. See E. A. 
Brockhaus, Konversations-Lexicon, Berlin and Vienna, 1894. Pieces 
of the English lyric-epic type have no specific name in French. 
They are grouped under the large class of chansons populaires, a 
name as inclusive as our " folk-song." But see also note 13. 



THE NAME BALLAD 41 

the material which it describes is recent. Over-emphasis 
upon its etymology, and the double and triple senses in 
which contemporary scholars use the term, have puzzled 
and misled many earnest students. Writers who insist 
that they have clearly in mind what they mean sometimes 
apply the name " ballad " to dance songs, sometimes to 
narrative songs, sometimes to pure lyrics, and sometimes 
to all three. 

Ballad is derived from ballare, to dance, and historically 
it means dancing song ; it is associated etymologically with 
ballet, a form of dance. In the Romance languages, from 
which the word issued into general European currency, it 
came to apply to various types of lyrics. The French and 
Italian pieces taking the name, or various forms of it, are 
genuinely lyrical; they are to be associated with dance 
origins, and they do not narrate happenings or suggest 
action. Many were used, it is certain, as dance songs. 10 
To be a folk-ballad, not merely a folk-song, an English 
piece must tell a story. Poems of the type of Rossetti's 
Sister Helen or Stratton Water, or Longfellow's The 
Wreck of the Hesperus, are termed a literary " ballads, 
as over against anonymous traditional ballads, like Sir 
Patrick Spens. The name ballad, meaning primarily, as 
we have seen, a dance-lyric is not entirely satisfactory for 
these lyric-epics. It gained its distinctive application by 
chance rather than by historic right, and it gained this 
application late. Owing partly to the etymology of the 
name, partly to the hypotheses of certain critics, who asso- 
ciate the origin of the English and Scottish pieces with 
the choral dances of mediaeval festal communes, ballads 

10 Dante, for example, assigns ballata a lower plane than song 
proper or sonnet on account of its dependence on the aid of dancers. 



42 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

of the type collected by Professor F. J. Child have come 
to be associated with the dance to a degree which the evi- 
dence does not justify. The dance is given place in the 
foreground, as essential in defining the type and its origin, 
instead of being made something remote and subsidiary. 
For the Child pieces, the etymology of the name should 
be given little or no emphasis ; insistence on it is likely to 
be misleading. In fact, dance-genesis has more imme- 
diate connection with English lyrics of many other types, 
in the consideration of which we are not asked to have it 
constantly before us, than it has with the English ballads ; 
for instance, with the ballade, or the rondeau. 

The name " ballad " was not applied specifically to 
heroic or romantic narrative songs until the eighteenth 
century. Thomas Deloney, in the age of Elizabeth, re u 
f erred to The Fair Flower of Northumberland and to 
Flodden Field as " songs." Sidney speaks of the " old 
song " of The Percy and the Douglas. Pepys uses the 
same term for narrative songs. Philip's New World of 
English Words X1 defines " ballad " as " a Common Song 
sung up and down the streets." In Dr. Johnson's Dic- 
tionary " ballad " means " song " and nothing more. It 
was Pitson who first stated the distinction that now obtains. 
" With us, songs of sentiment, expression, or even descrip- 
tion, are properly called songs, in contradistinction to mere 
narrative pieces, which we now denominate ballads." 12 
For several centuries earlier the name had been applied 

11 Sixth edition, 1705. 

. 12 Introduction to his Select Collection of English Songs, 3 vols., 
2nd edition, 1813. Shenstone and Michael Bruce had expressed the 
distinction earlier (see S. B. Hustvedt, Ballad Criticism in Scandi- 
navia and Great Britain, 1916, p. 254), but it was first publicly 
enunciated by Ritson. 



THE NAME BALLAD 43 

with miscellaneous reference. It might be given to a 
short didactic poem, a love poem (as sometimes now), to 
poems of satire and vituperation, to political pieces, to 
hymns and religious pieces, to elegiac pieces, occasionally 
to narrative pieces ; in short, to lyrics of any type. Thus 
its specific application to verse of the Child type came late 
and not by inheritance, but arbitrarily. Nor did the ety- 
mology of the name play any part in the selection of it 
for the pieces to which it was applied. 

It will be sufficient to sketch in summary here the stages 
of development for English in the usage of the name 
ballad. 13 

When Chaucer uses the term ballad it is for lyrics of 
the fixed type imported from the French, the Balade de 
Bon Conseyl, or Lak of Stedfastnesse, or the Compleynt 
to His Empty Purse, not to lyric-epics. 14 Ballad was 
long used of dance songs of various types, as a few 

1 3 The entries- in The New English Dictionary have been referred 
to. Fourteen pages of matter illustrative of the history of ballade 
are given in Larousse's Grand Dictionnaire Universel du xix 
Siecle, Paris (1867), ranging from the first entry "chanson a 
danser " to, " Aujourd'hui, ode d'un genre familier et le plus souvent 
legendaire et f antastique : les ballades de Schiller, de Goethe, etc." 
Nothing is said of a narrative element. But see especially Helen 
Louise Cohen, The Ballade, Columbia University Studies in English 
and Comparative Literature, New York, 1915. According to Miss 
Cohen, the word is used in contemporary French in the way in 
which it has come to be used in English and in German. " In 
France, at the present time, the same word, ballade, serves for" the 
English or Scottish popular ballad and for a certain kind of narra- 
tive poem, written in imitation of German authors like Uhland, as 
well as for the artificially fixed lyric poem." The usages of " bal- 
lad " for English have been traced by Professor Gummere, Old Eng- 
lish Ballads, pp. xviii ff. 

I* An excellent example of his usage is found in the Prologue to 



44 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

citations will show ; e. g., these lines from Dunbar's Golden 
Targe, of about 1500: 

And sang ballettes with mighty notes clere, 
Ladyes to daunce full sobirly assayit. 

Ascham writes in 1545, 15 " these balades and roundes, 
these galiardes, pauanes and daunces." A passage in 
George Gascoigne's Certain Notes of Instruction, 1575, 
is very specific. He thinks of the term mainly in 
Chaucer's sense: 

There is also another kinde, called Ballade, and therof are 
sundrie sortes : for a man may write ballade in ,a. staff e of sixe 
lines, every line eonteyning eighte or sixe sillables, wherof 
the firste and third, second and fourth do rime acrosse, and the 
fifth and sixth do rime togither in conclusion. You may write 
also your ballad of tenne syllables, rimying as before is declared, 
but these two were wont to be most comonly used in ballade, 
whiche propre name was (I thinke) derived of this worde in 
Italian Ballare, whiche signifieth to daunce, and indeed, those 
kinds of rimes serve beste for daunces and light matters. 

Ben Jonson, in Love Restored, writes " Unless we should 
come in like Morrice-dancers and whistle our ballet our- 
selves." All these citations show loose reference to ama- 
tory songs, and dance songs, lyrical, not narrative in char- 
acter. The word is also applied to pieces of the various 
types enumerated at the end of the preceding paragraph. 
Cotgrave's Dictionary of the French and English Tongues, 
1611, associates the word with dance song. Burton writes, 

The Legend of Good Women, where he has his characters dance in a 
circle " as it were in carole-wise " while they sang the ballade — 
" Hyd, Absolon, thy gilte tresses clere." 
is Toxophilus, Arber ed., p. 39. 



THE NAME BALLAD 45 

Anatomy of Melancholy, in, 1, i, " Castalio would not have 
young men read the Canticles because to his thinking it 
was too light and amorous a tract, a ballad of ballads, as 
our old English translation hath it." Percy, as often 
pointed out, employs ballad in his Reliques with miscella- 
neous application. Eitson's contribution toward estab- 
lishing the word in its latest meaning has been' quoted 
already. Coleridge's use is modern when he writes of 
" The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens." To sum- 
marize the stages for English: 

1. Ballad in the fourteenth century meant the Erench 
art lyric with fixed form. The name could be given to 
a dance song, though the latter was more often called a 
carol. Ballad, in the period when it could mean dance 
song, did not mean " narrative lyric." 

2. In the Elizabethan period, ballads, ballets, ballants, 
etc., are terms loosely associated with song, or lyric verse 
of various kinds. The name could be applied to dance 
songs, among these types and, though infrequently, to 
narrative lyrics. 

3. In the eighteenth century, ballad continues in loose 
popular usage. With specialists it comes to have particu- 
lar reference to narrative songs. The narrative songs 
which the eighteenth century collected were not dance 
songs, and they are not the pieces called by cognate names 
in the Romance languages, from which ballad, in lyric 
nomenclature, is derived. 

4. In the nineteenth century, ballad continues in loose 
popular reference as synonymous with song. In the use 
of specialists it is increasingly applied to narrative songs ; 
by the twentieth century, this has become the primary 
meaning. The variant ballade, in the Erench and four- 



46 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

teenth-century English sense, is revived, in the nineteenth 
century, with the re-introduction of the fixed lyric type. 

This sketch should have made clear that a definition of 
the ballad as "a narrative lyric made and sung at the 
dance and handed down in popular tradition " is not war- 
ranted, for English ballads, by the history of the word. 
Ebr a valid etymological argument for ballad as a dance 
song, one would have to derive the lyric-epic species, ballad, 
from the fixed art species, the ballade. And there is no 
sufficient proof that narrative lyrics were ever, anywhere, 
at any time, by any people, made and sung at the dance. 
The dance songs of primitive peoples are* not narrative, 
and the earliest English dance songs are not narrative. 
Nor is this longer definition, also Professor Gummere's, 16 
better. " The popular ballad, as it is understood for the 
purpose of these selections, is a narrative, in lyric form, 
with no traces of individual authorship, and is preserved 
mainly by oral tradition. In its earliest stages it was 
meant to be sung by a crowd, and got its name from the 
dance to which it furnished the sole musical accompani- 
ment." The first sentences are unimpeachable, but the 
last is not. The lyric type to which reference is- made 
did not get. its name until the late eighteenth century, and 
then took it by borrowing or transference from songs of 
another character, for which it was more appropriate. It 
could not have taken its name from its origin, nor is its 
name evidence as to its origin. 

is In The Popular Ballad (1907), pp. 75, 344, etc., and "Ballads" 
in Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature. " Their very 
name," we are reminded, " tells of external origin at the communal 
dance." 



DANCE SONGS PKOPEE 47 



II DANOE SOFGS PROPEK 

The name actually given in England to dance songs of 
the Middle Ages was " carol." We hear of carols before 
we hear of ballads. There is a familiar picture of a high- 
born throng singing to the caroling of a lady in the Chau- 
cerian Romance of the Rose: 

The folk of which I telle you so, 
Upon a carole wenten tho. 

A lady caroled hem that hyghte, 
Gladness (the) blisful, the lyghte . . . 

743-6. 

Tho mightest thou caroles seen, 
And folk (ther) daunce and mery been 
And make many a fair tourning 
Upon the grene gras springing . . . 

759-62. 

The description is continued, 802-15, 850-54, and on- 
wards, and teaches us no little concerning mediaeval dance 
customs. Other passages, illustrating the use of carol for 
dance song, in the next century, might be multiplied. 17 
Many are cited in the dictionaries. 

Suppose we try to put ourselves back into the old world 

17 Compare Gaivayn and the Green Knight : " This King Arthur 
lay royally at Camelot at Christmas tide with many fine lords, the 
best of men, all the rich brethren of the Round Table, with right 
rich revel and careless mirth. There full many heroes tourneyed 
betimes, jousted full gaily; then returned these gentle knights to 
the court to make carols. For there the feast was held full fifteen 
days alike with all the meat and the mirth that men could devise. 
Such a merry tumult, glorious to hear; joyful din by day, dancing 
at night. All was high joy in hall and chambers with lords and 
ladies as pleased them best." 



48 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

of dance songs. What kind of song was it which the lady 
sang, and to which the others danced % It might have 
been a ballade, or roundel, or " virelai," or some type of 
art lyric, with fixed refrain of regular occurrence ; for such 
lyrics were used for dancing. 18 Or it might have had 
greater suggestion of animation and movement, like many 
examples afforded by Old French verse ; 19 or it might 
have been a gay love lyric. That it was anything like 
King Estmere, or Thomas Rymer, or Edward, or Lord 
Randal, is most improbable. And when peasant throngs, 
as over against aristocrats, danced in feudal times, they 
did not dance, as I believe, to pieces of the lyric-epic type 
just mentioned. Nor, as a general thing, the rule rather 
than the exception, did they dance to their own improvisa- 
tions. It is more likely that they danced to current in- 
herited songs, appropriate for dance purposes, with, possi- 
bly enough, a bygone vogue in higher circles behind them ; 
that is, if we keep the analogies of existent dance songs 
before us. 

The following lines from Gawain Douglas point to the 
dancing of his characters mostly to lyric and amatory 
matter : 20 

Sum sing sangis, dansis ledys and roundis 
With vocis sehill, quhill all the dail resoundis 
Quharso thai walk into thar carolyng 
For amorus lays doith the Roches ryng: 

18 See the quotation from Chaucer's Prologue to the Legend of 
Good Women, note 14 preceding. 

1 9 See the ballettes, in Jeanroy's Les Origines de la Poesie Lyrique 
en France au Moyen Age; and his letter, cited in Miss Cohen's The 
Ballade, p. 15; also Joseph Bedier, Les Plus Anciennes Danses 
Frangaises, Revue des Deux Mondes, Jan. 15, 1906, p. 398. 

20 Mneid, Prologue of Bk. XII. 



DANCE SONGS PKOPEK 49 

And sang, 'the schyp salys our the salt faym 
Will bryng thir merchandis and my lemman haym ' ; 
Sum other syngis, I wil be blyth*and lyeht 
Mine hart is lent upon so gudly wight. 

But we need not speak speculatively of mediaeval dance 
songs. Many remain to us; and it is possible to derive 
from them pretty clear ideas as to what the typical ones 
were like. A couplet used for dance purposes remains 
from the twelfth century. E it son 21 cites from Lam- 
barde's Dictionary of England this anecdote : " In tyme 
of Hen. II. [anno 1173] Robert therl of Leycester . . . 
purposed to spoile the town and thabbey [of St. Edmundes 
Burye] . . . Now while his gallauntes paused upon the 
heathe, they fell to daunce and singe, 

"Hoppe Wylikin, hoppe Wyllykin, 
Ingland is thyne and myne, etc." 

The well-known Burner is icumen in of the thirteenth 
century, might have been a dance song — its animation 
and movement would make it appropriate; and welcomes 
to spring, when dancing on the green or in the grove could 
be resumed, were common for dance-song usage in all parts 
of Europe. A classic example of a dance song is that 
preserved by Eabyan (1516), celebrating the victory of 
the Scots at Bannockburn : 22 

21 Dissertation on Ancient Songs and Music (ed. of 1829), p. xl. 
The fragment of the dance song is to be found in Matthew of Paris's 
Historia Anglorum sive, ut vulgo dicitur, Historia Minor. Ed. Sir 
F. Madden, Rolls series (1866), vol. I, p. 381. See also J. F. 
Royster, English Tags in Matthew of Paris, Modern Language Re- 
view, vol. rv, p. 509. 

22 Concordance of Histories. 



50 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

Maydens of Englonde, sore may ye morne, 

For your lemmans ye have loste at Bannockisborne ! 

With a hewe a lowe. 
What wenyth the Kynge of Englonde 
So soon to have wonne Scotlonde: 

With a nimby lowe. 

This song, says Fabyan, " was after many days sung in 
dances, in caroles of the maidens and minstrels of Scot- 
land." High-born maidens they were, too, most likely, 
not peasants. It is appropriate for a dance song. It is 
lyrical, not a verse story. The refrain is important, and 
holds it together; bnt it is not narrative. It is nothing 
like a Child piece, and never became like one, so far as 
there is evidence. 23 

23 King Cnut's song is often said ( Gummere, Cambridge History 
of English Literature, vol. n, ch. xvii, The Popular Ballad, pp. 58 ff, 
Old English Ballads, p. 254) to give us our "first example of 
actual ballad structure and the ballad's metrical form which is to 
be met in English records." The beginning of the song and an ac- 
count of its composition, as the king's boat neared Ely, is given 
in the Historia Eliensis of 1166. But whether the song affords valid 
illustration of ballad history turns upon whether its missing lines 
are epic or lyric, i.e., whether it was a ballad or merely a song. 
There is no proof that it was lyric-epic in character, the presence 
of rhyme and the strophe structure are both doubtful, and there 
is no proof that it was a dance song ( as Professor Gummere assumed 
when he persistently translated the chronicler's in choris publice 
as " sung in their dances " ) , or that it ever came to be used as such. 
Judging from the chronicler's account, it was more likely to have 
started as a rowing song. Danish folk poetry has many of these. 
(See nos. 124, 140, 460, 244, 399) in Grundtvig's Denmark's Gamle 
Volkeviser) . The king's boat would be no appropriate place for a 
festal throng to dramatize a ballad ; nor is the refrain " Row, 
knights, near the land," if it be one, a suitable refrain for a dance 
song. Cnut's song comes from a date early enough to illustrate 
ballad origins, but it is of doubtful availability for the communal- 
ists. It did not originate in the dance and we do not know that 



DANCE SONGS PKOPEE 51 

Here are two songs which are presumably dance songs, 
from the fifteenth century, the first unusually spirited: 24 

Icham of Irlaunde, 
Am of the holy londe 
Of Irlande; 
Good sir, pray I ye 
For of Saynte Charite, 
Come ant daunce wyt me 
In Irlaunde. 

The second also sounds suitable for its purpose: 

Holi with his mery men they 

can daunce in hall; 
Ivy & her ientyl women can. 

not daunce at all, 

But lyke a meyne of bullokes 

in a water fall 
Or on a whot somer's day 

Whan they be mad all. 

Nay, nay, ive, it may not be, 

iwis; 
For holy must haue the mastry, 

as the maner is. 

Neither of these has the stanzaic pattern of the ballads. 
A song certainly used as a dance song, and very animated 
and lyrical, is the familiar The Hunt is Up of the time of 

it was, or ever became, a ballad in theme and structure. If it was 
ever used as a dance song, it was long after it was composed and 
at the time when — to conform to theories concerning it — it should 
have been " divorcing itself from the dance " and becoming epic. 
See King Cnut's Song and Ballad Origins, Modern Language Notes, 
March, 1919. 

24 The first is from MS. Eawlinson, D. 913, f. 1, the second from 
MS. Balliol, 354, f. 229, b. 



52 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

Henry VIII. The lines are short, and they throw the 
hearer into the dancing mood. Some examples of Old 
English dance songs, lively and appropriate in melody, 
coming from the sixteenth century, are given in ChappelPs 
Old English Popular Music. An especially popular one 
was John, Come Kiss Me Now. 

Jon come kisse me now, now, 
Jon come kisse me, now, 
Jon, come kisse me by and by, 
and make no more adoW. 

The following is a Morris-dance song from Nashe's play 
of Summer s Last Will and Testament : — 

Trip and goe, heave and hoe, 
Up and down, to and fro, 
From the towne to the grove 
Two and two, let us rove, 
A-Maying, a-playing; 
Love hath no gainsaying, 
So merrily trip and goe." 

None of these genuine dance songs cited exhibits the 
septenar rhythm of the ballads ; indeed neither the couplet 
form of the older ballads nor the quartrain form of the 
newer seems especially appropriate for the dance. 

Both nobly-born groups from castle or court and village 
peasant groups had their dance songs in the Middle Ages ; 
but surely these songs were not contemporaneously of 
identical type ; and it is very improbable that either type 
was the Child type. There is a great deal of unmistakable 
testimony as to the use of lyrical, song-like pieces, in 
England, for dance songs. Next to none exists — not to 



DANCE SONGS PEOPEE 53 

dwell upon their smaller intrinsic appropriateness — for 
the staple use of narrative songs for such purpose. 

There is evidence, from recent times, that in a few cases 
well-known Child pieces have been ritualized into dance 
songs. W. W. Newell speaks of Barbara Allen as used in 
" play party " games in the early part, of the nineteenth 
century in England. This ballad was an actress's song, 
in the seventeenth century, when we first hear of it. Ac- 
cording to Professor Child, The Maid Freed from the 
Gallows has known game-song usage. 25 A version recov- 
ered in Nebraska of The Two Sisters has obviously been 
used as a dance song. The following are specimen 
stanzas : 

There was an old woman lived on the seashore 

Bow down 
There was an old woman lived on the seashore, 

Balance true to me 
And she had daughters three or four, 

Saying I'll be true to my love 
If my love is true to me . . . 

The oldest and youngest were walking the seashore, 

Bow down 
The oldest and youngest were walking the seashore, 

Balance true to me 
The oldest pushed the youngest o'er, 

Saying I'll be true to my love 
If my love is true to me . . . 

Such might not have been the case, yet one feels as though, 
if any of these pieces had been orally preserved for some 
generations as a dance song, for throngs on the village 

25 See also Gilchrist and Broadwood, Journal of the Folk-Song So- 
ciety, v, pp. 228 S. 



54 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

green, the narrative element would have become yet more 
fragmentary and inconsequential than it is in the quoted 
dance-song version of The Two Sisters; the refrain mean- 
time assuming greater and greater prominence, and becom- 
ing the stable and identifying feature of the song. For 
dance songs proper, preserved in tradition, one expects a 
strong refrain formula and a fading or utterly absent nar- 
rative element. 

That the Child pieces should be utilized, though infre- 
quently, as dance or game songs is not to be wondered at ; 
for popular songs of all kinds are so employed occasionally, 
alongside the more appropriate inherited dance songs. 
Mediaeval dancing throngs, like their descendants now, 
were no doubt likely to utilize any new song as a dance 
song; as The Hunt is Up, of the time of Henry VIII, 
according to The Complaynt of Scotland (1549). We are 
told that in the fast-dying-out play-party or ring-dance 
songs of our own rural communities, songs like John 
Brown s Body, Captain Jinks, Little Brown Jug, and the 
negro minstrel Jim along Jo, or Buffalo Gals, have been so 
used. Indeed, the minstrel Old Dan Tucker has died out 
of memory as a minstrel song, and has been kept alive as 
a ring-game song. But if the Child ballads had been 
dance songs par excellence, they would have come down to 
us very differently in tradition. They played a large role 
in popular recital and song in the Middle Ages, and had 
the role they played as dance songs been proportionately 
large, we should have unmistakable evidence of it; both 
external testimonies, and evidence within the songs them- 
selves. We should know from the changes which they 
developed in structure, from internal allusions to the 
dance, and from the lore of traditional dance songs. 



DANCE SONGS PROPER 55 

The dance may well have started many forms of 
mediaeval lyrism with refrain formulas, whether of the 
artistic or of the more popular type. Such derivation is 
usually assigned to many of them. But it is the more 
lyrical forms, rather than the verse-tales, which were most 
closely bound up with the dance. We also associate with 
the dance the spontaneous popular lyrics, dance- songs 
proper, which have been preserved for us here and there 
in printed form, or those which have descended to us in 
our ring-dance or game songs. Both the art lyrics with 
refrains, and the more popular and impersonal lyrics with 
refrains, like Sumer is icumen in, make their appearance 
in literature before ballads of the Child type do. 

If dance origin, or connection with the dance, is an 
essential feature of " ballads/' the name belongs with 
better right to mediaeval art lyrics, to the surviving dance 
songs proper, or to the type remaining in our play-party 
songs and ring games, for which we have no specific name, 
aside from the inclusive and ambiguous " folk-song." It 
is always a safe thing to test our theories as to older con- 
ditions for popular song — mediaeval conditions, for ex- 
ample — by usages in living society, where these afford 
analogies ; for human procedure, whether in language, ac- 
tion, or song, has remained pretty constant from primi- 
tive times onward. The ring games of young people of 
the present day preserve many of the dramatic elements 
of the communal dance, and the songs used in them seem 
to preserve many of the features of the old dance songs. 
It was the form of these songs, not that of the Child pieces, 
which was conditioned by dance usage, and bears the 
marks of such usage. If the Child pieces were primarily 
evolved in the dance, they ought to show more signs of it, 



56 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

and to be structurally more suitable; for instance, they 
should suggest more swing and movement. And to think 
of them as evolved via dances of commoners, not of aristo- 
crats, is difficult indeed. 

A disciple of the communal theory of ballad origins, 
Dr. Arthur Saalbach, 26 after special study of the ballad 
of Thomas Rymer (Thomas of Erceldoune) decides that 
it had its origin in gatherings of the mediaeval dwellers of 
Earlston for song and dance. They proceeded, he thinks, 
to give dramatic rendition of the old story of their local 
hero, Thomas. Some participant improvised a few lines 
about Thomas to a familiar or an improvised melody. 
The chorus of bystanders joined in for the refrain or for 
repetition of the last line of the strophe. Perhaps a man 
took the role of Thomas and a woman the role of the 
Fairy for the whole occasion. The choric-ballad arising 
in this manner, found favor, and was repeated at the next 
gathering. He finds additional evidence for such origin 
in the dramatic handling of the dialogue in the ballad. 

But there is nothing suggesting dance-song origin in 
the structure of Thomas Rymer, as it remains to us. It is 
not even built about a refrain; indeed it seems intrinsi- 
cally inappropriate as a dance song. And if we argue 
from the analogies of modern folk-throngs, those at Earls- 
ton danced probably to familiar matter — in which case 
the level of life treated in the subject-matter of their dance 
song might be higher than their own. Or, if they im- 
provised, their improvisation probably concerned them- 
selves, or something in their immediate horizon, their own 

26 Entstehungsgeschichte der Schottischen Volksballade, Thomas 
Rymer. Diss. Halle (1913), pp. 63-65. 



DANCE SONGS PROPER 57 

humble interests and station, or the latest occurrence among 
them. It would not be heroic or a fairy story but some- 
thing satirical or personal and something contemporary; 
and, judging from known folk-efforts, it would probably 
so lack cohesion and finished structure as to be one of 
the first of their songs to die. Thomas Rymer sounds as 
though composed for the delectation of the aristocratic, not 
for and certainly not by villagers. 

Let us look at some of the dance songs remaining in 
present tradition, and then apply our observations back- 
ward. Children's game songs, and the play-party songs 
of young folks on the green and in the parlor, in rural 
communities, have been collected, in England chiefly by 
Mrs. Gomme, and in the United States by W. W. Newell 
for New England, and by many collectors for the central 
west. It is generally agreed that our traditional dance 
and game songs descend from those of the middle ages 
and preserve many ancient features ; especially the dances 
in circle form which are executed to the singing of the 
participants, not to the music of instruments. A number 
of these pieces seem surely to be of high descent, and many 
even reflect the old environment of grove and green. 
Some of the texts sound as though they accompanied the 
dances of the high born. Recall the many references to 
" ladies " or " my fair lady " — " lady " is not yet a demo- 
cratic noun in England — to kings and princes, or dukes, 
to solid gold rings, to " He wore a star upon his breast," 
and the like. Most of the songs suggest that they are 
movement songs by their very wording, or structure. In 
most cases a typical stanza only will be cited; for the 
songs are pretty familiar, and they have become accessible, 



58 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

in late years, in game books for school usage. The cita- 
tions are from Mrs. Gomme's Dictionary of British Folk- 
Lore. 27 

Here we go round the mulberry bush, 
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, 
Here we go round the mulberry bush, 
On a cold and frosty morning. 

Mulberry Bush, I, p. 404. 

Round and round the village, 
Round and round the village, 
Round and round the village, 
As we have done before. 

In and out the windows, 
In and out the windows, 
In and out the windows, 
As we have done before. 

Bound and Round the Village, II, p. 122. 

Tripping up the green grass, 

Dusty, dusty day, 
Come all ye pretty fair maids, 

Come and with me play. . . . 

Naughty man, he won't come out, 

He won't come out, he won't come out, 

27 Mrs. Gomme gives a list of dance games, n, p. 465, and of 
circle-form games, with singing and action, n, p. 476. The songs 
cited here are recognized by her as descending in traditional dance 
usage. 

" In den Kinderreigen," says Bohme, Geschichte des Tanzes, ch. 
xvn, " werden wir noch alten tiberresten von Tanzliedern der Vor- 
zeit begegnen." As ring-dances were given up by the mature they 
lingered among children. One should not infer, however, that all 
children's play songs were originally game or dance-songs of grown- 
ups. Childhood is as ancient as maturity, and even the savagest 
children have their own songs. 



DANCE SONGS PKOPER 59 

Naughty man, he won't come out, 
To help us in our dancing. 

Green Grass, I, p. 156. 

From another text of the same song : 

Here we go up the green grass, 
The green grass, the green grass, 
Here we go up the green grass, 
So early in the morning. 

Ibid., i, p. 160. 

A ring, a ring o' roses, 
A pocket full of posies; 
A curtsey in and a curtsey out, 
And a curtsey all together. 

A Ring of Roses, n, p. 108. 

Green gravel green gravel, the grass is so green, 
The fairest young damsel that ever was seen. . . . 

Green Gravel, I, p. 171. 

The material is too abundant and too familiar for much 
illustration to be needed. A few more miscellaneous 
stanzas are: 

Here we come a-piping, 
First in spring and then in May, 
The Queen she sits upon the sand, 
Fair as a lily, white as a wand: 
King John has sent you letters three, 
And begs you'll read them unto me, 
We can't read one without them all, 
So, pray, Miss Bridget, deliver the ball. 

Queen Anne, n, p. 91. 

Here's a soldier left his lone, 
Wants a wife and can't get none, 
Merrily go round and choose your own, 



60 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

Choose a good one or else choose none, 
Choose the worst or choose the best, 
Or choose the very one you like best. 

Here's a Soldier, i, p. 206. 

Poor Mary, what're you weepin' for, 
A-weepin' for, a-weepin' for, 
Pray, Mary, what're you weepin' for? 
On a bright summer's day. 

Poor Mary Sits A-Weeping, u, p. 47. 

The following dramatic song is listed by Mrs. Gomme as 
a circle-form song; though she thinks it originally a 
harvest-song : 

Oats and beans and barley grow! 
Oats and beans and barley grow! 
Do you or I or anyone know 
How oats and beans and barley grow? 
First the farmer sows his seed, 
Then he stands and takes his ease, 
Stamps his foot, and claps his hands, 
Then turns round to view the land 

Waiting for a partner, waiting for a partner! 
Open the ring and take one in. 

Oats and Beans and Barley, n, p. 1. 

Let us turn next to some of the ring-dance songs of 
young people in the United States, surviving in our fast- 
dying-out play-party songs. The dancing, as in the 
mediaeval dance songs, is to the singing of the dancers, 
not to instrumental music. Old World importations are 
easily recognized. The refrains remain the same as in 
their British cognates : 

Come honey, my love, come trip with me, 
In the morning early 



DANCE SONGS PKOPEE 61 

Heart and hand we'll take our stand; 
'Tis true, I love you dearly. 

Weevilly Wheat. 28 

Oh, the jolly old miller boy, he lived by the mill, 
The mill turned round with a right good will, 

And all that he made, he put it on the shelf, 
At the end of the year he was gaining in his wealth, 
One hand in the hopper, and the other in the sack, 
Gents step forward and the ladies step back. 

The Jolly Old Miller. 29 

Go out and in the window, 
Go out and in the window, 
Go out and in the window, 
For we shall gain the day. 

We're Marching Bound the Levy. 30 

Lost your partner, what'll you do? 
Lost your partner, what'll you do? 
Lost your partner, what'll you do? 
Skip to My Lou, my darling. 

Skip to My Lou. 31 

Come all ye young people that's wending your way, 
And sow your wild oats in your youthful day, 
For the daylight it passes, and night's coming on, 
So choose you a partner, and be marching along, marching 
along. 32 

Professor E. E. Piper points out 33 that in songs which 

28 Mrs. L. D. Ames, The Missouri Play-Party, Journal of American 
Folk-Lore, xxiv (1911), p. 302. 

29 Ibid,, p. 306. 
so Hid., p. 306. 
si IUd., p. 304. 
zzlbid., p. 314. 

33 Some Play-Party Games of the Middle West, Journal of Ameri- 
can Folk-Lore, crx, p. 264. 



62 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

describe the progress of a game, like The Miller Boy (The 
Jolly Miller of Mrs. Gomme) and Juniper Tree: 

dear sister Phoebe, how happy were we, 
The night we sat under the juniper tree! 
The juniper tree, heigho, heigho! 
The juniper tree, heigho! 

Then rise you up, Sister, go choose you a man, 
Go choose you the fairest that ever you can, 
Then rise you up, Sister, and go, and go, 
Then rise you up, Sister, and go. . . . 

the form remains fairly constant. In such songs one can- 
not easily change the words without changing the formula. 
In the same way, Oats, pease, beans, remains fairly con- 
stant. Weevilly Wheat and Kilmacranhie perhaps afford 
examples of " the decay of ballad matter under the usage 
of the singing game, or dance." 34 Many of the songs he 
lists show the influence of quadrilles and other dances, 
illustrating once more the tendency of the imported, or 
higher, or newer, to descend and linger among the hum- 
bler and more remote. A few more illustrations of gen- 
uine communal dance songs should suffice : 

We come here to bounce around, 
We come here to bounce around, 
We come here to bounce around, 

Tra, la, la, la! 

Ladies, do, si, do, 

Gents, you know, 

3 * This seems the natural process ; but compare Professor Gum- 
mere's latest theories of ballad growth and " improvement," cited 
a little farther on. The process which, to collectors of folk dance- 
songs, brings ballad degradation, to Professor Gummere is the pro- 
cess by which are evolved " good " ballads. At other times, however, 



DANCE SONGS PKOPEK 63 

Swing to the right, 
And then to the left, 
And all promenade. 35 

Up and down the center we go, 
Up and down the center we go, 
Up and down the center we go, 
This cold and frosty morning. 

Chase that Squirrel.™ 

When popular songs, or street songs, are utilized as 
dance songs, they are handled like this : 

Captain Jinks 

I'm Captain Jinks of the horse marines, 
I feed my horse on corn and beans, 
And court young ladies in their teens, 
For that's the style of the army. 

We'll all go round and circle left, 
We'll circle left, we'll circle left, 
We'll all go round and circle left, 

For that's the style of the army. 
The ladies right and form a ring, 
And when they form you give'm a swing, 
And when you swing you give'm a call, 

And take your lady and promenade all. 37 

Jim Along Jo 

Hi, Jim along, Jim along, Josie 
Hi, Jim along, Jim, along Jo 
Hi, Jim along, Jim along Josie 
Hi, Jim along, Jim along Jo. 38 

he continued to make reference to the " degradation " and " decay " 
due to tradition. 

35 Ames, p. 296. 37 Ames, p. 309. 

s6 Piper, p. 266. 38 Piper, p. 268. 



64 THE BALLAD AND THE DA1STCE 

Little Brown Jug 
Sent my brown jug down in town, 
Sent my brown jug down in town, 
Sent my brown jug down in town, 
So early in the morning. 39 

Not one of these pieces is a ballad, just as the vocal 
accompaniments to old British dances round the Maypole 
were not ballads. One of the latter has survived in the 
ring games of the Georgia negroes, again illustrating the 
survival, in outlying places, among the humble and remote, 
of matter assimilated from the usage, in bygone vogue, of 
people of another social class : 

All around the May-pole, 

The May-pole, the May-pole, 
All around the May-pole. 

Now, Miss Sally, won't you bow? etc. 40 

Repetition and interweaving of lines, is much more per- 
vasive and essential in communal dance songs than in 
pieces of the Child type, and it is of a different kind. It 
shows us, however, the type of repetition to be expected in 
such dance songs. There is no evidence that ballads are 
ever built up from dance songs, but a great deal that dance 
songs may be built upon popular songs of all types. Mrs. 
Gomme notes that many English circle-game songs have 
evidently been derived from love ballads, drinking songs, 
and toasts, and that some of the dance games are of this 
origin. 

so Goldy M. Hamilton, The Play-Party in Northeast Missouri, 
Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxvn, pp. 269, 297 (The Girl I 
Left Behind Me), p. 301. 

40 Loraine Darby, Ring Games from Georgia, Journal of American 
Folk-Lore, xxx (1917), p. 218. 



DANCE SONGS PKOPEE 65 

If the ballads had been used typically in popular dances, 
collections like those made by Mrs. Gomme and Mr. Newell 
should reveal many traces of such usage. On the other 
hand, when we do not assume that ballads were the staple 
material of mediaeval dance songs, what has come down 
to us in tradition is of just the character which we should 
expect. There are many " situation " songs among these 
traditional dance and game songs, and there are dialogue 
pieces ; 41 but one finds no traces of the development of 
dialogue songs into ballads proper, or of the " divorcing " 
of dance songs from the dance, on the way toward becom- 
ing lyric-epics. 

When we examine genuine dance songs, it becomes clear 
that their most important element is the repetitional 
element. The texts of most of them shift even more than 
do the ballad texts, for there is no story to hold them 
together; but the repeated element, or the refrain, is 
stable. 42 They are lyrical, and they tempt to movement. 
And, as suggested above, no matter how long they have 
been preserved in usage as dance songs, they have never 
developed into anything like Child ballads, nor have they 
been transformed into narrative pieces of any type. They 
show no signs of the evolution sketched by Professor Gum- 

4i Mrs. Gomme thinks that the dialogue songs are of later de- 
velopment, II, p. 500. Professors W. M. Hart and G. H. Stempel 
think that dialogue songs represent a very early stage, in the history 
of ballads proper. 

42 A remark made by Professor C. S. Baldwin concerning the 
ballad is much truer of the dance song, " The refrain, then, is not 
a poetic embellishment; it is a kind of nucleus; it determines the 
structure. The tale is built around the refrain," English Metiiceval 
Literature (1914), p. 237. For the role played by refrains in the 
English ballads, see p. 188. 



66 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

mere, in his chapter in the Cambridge History of English 
Literature: 

The structure of the ballad — what makes it a species, the 
elements of it — derives from choral and dramatic conditions; 
what gives it its peculiar art of narrative is the epic process 
working by oral tradition and gradually leading to a new struc- 
ture. 



Or in his The Popular Ballad: 



43 



. . . the course of the popular ballad is from a mimetic choral 
situation, slowly detaching itself out of the festal dance and 
coming into the reminiscent ways of tradition in song and re- 
cital. 

Or in Democracy and Poetry: 

Development of narrative poetry out of repetition is an obvious 
process easily proved by the facts and consists simply in a 
decrease of verbal repetition and a corresponding increase of the 
verbal increment." ..." An epic element, accretional and ex- 
planatory, has in many cases been added to the choral and dra- 
matic nucleus." 44 

The songs cited in the foregoing pages have survived 
under the right conditions, oral and communal, but they 
show no signs of an " epic process " leading to a new 
structure. The Child ballads, on the other hand, show 
something quite different from the dance songs. For 
them, the refrain is the variable element. Their texts 

43 P. 84. It is rather surprising to find, on pp. 68-69, that " narra- 
tive is not a fixed fundamental primary fact in the ballad scheme." 
This means that the very thing that makes a ballad a ballad, not 
verse of some other lyric type, is not a fundamental or primary 
feature of its structure. 

44 Pp. 186, 190. 



NARRATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE 67 

remain as constant as the conditions of transmission allow ; 
but the refrain does not remain constant within the same 
ballad. The test of living folk-song, examination of the 
kind of thing which the folk can improvise now, and the 
character of the songs which are genuinely and primarily 
dance songs, preserved in oral transmission, ought to show 
the fatuity of seeking an identical genesis for these types 
and for pieces like the English and Scottish popular 
ballads. 45 It is a safer hypothesis that the Child type of 
piece, once established in popularity, might at times be 
fitted to well-known dance tunes, or be utilized, like nearly 
any other kind of song, as a dance song, than that dance- 
genesis evolved the Child type — that the Child type repre- 
sents, par excellence among poetic types, an evolution from 
dance origin. 

Ill NABEATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE 

It would be going much too far, would indeed be con- 
trary to the facts, to affirm that there is never dancing to 
narrative songs. Among European peoples where the 
narrative song has established itself as a leading type of 
popular song, instances of it occur, and there should be 
occasional instances of it anywhere among advanced 
peoples. 46 This should be especially true of the shorter 

45 Andrew Lang, in his article on Ballads in the Encyclopedia 
Britarmica wrote : " It is natural to conclude that our ballads too 
were first improvised and circulated in rustic dances." He held at 
the time the views still held by the majority of American scholars. 
But in his article on the same subject in the last edition of Cham- 
bers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1904), he has given up this 
theory of ballad origins, and indeed, from his article, is hardly 
recognizable as still a communalist. 

46 " Narrative, too, are most of the dance songs in a modern 



68 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

and more tuneful ballads. There was perhaps some 
dancing to heroic narrative songs, if not to " histories/' 
probably to romantic tales, in England. We have seen 
that in American ring-dance or " play-party " games, the 
descendants of mediaeval dance-modes, narrative songs are 
utilized occasionally, as Barbara Allen's Cruelty, referred 
to earlier, to accompany the dance. Songs of all types 
have undergone this experience, probably ballads along 
with the others, especially when the words were fitted to 
some familiar dance tune. But in a majority of cases the 
narrative pieces would be less suitable. Such utilization 
— this is my point — would not represent an original 
stage, but would be exceptional rather than normal. 

Our best evidence for early European dance songs comes 
from France. The French dance songs which remain to 
us are lyric, not lyric-epic, and they are aristocratic. 47 
Indeed, admits Professor Gum mere, " all the Old French 

Russian cottage/' writes Professor Gummere, Old English Ballads, p. 
lxxix, and cites Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, 1872. But 
the examples given by Ralston are not narrative; they are not bal- 
lads but lyrics, and of the expected type. Professor Gummere's soli- 
tary example of a dance ballad is from the Ditmarsh folk of Holstein, 
but even that is more lyric than lyric-epic. It labels itself as a 
dance song, and might well be an older song which has been fitted to 
the dance, not one made in the dance. The Popular Ballad, p. 97, 
footnote. 

Strictly, what are called " dances " among savages are in large 
part drama, and there is abundance of histrionic or mimetic action 
accompanied by songs of which action is the illustration, i. e., there 
are songs suggesting ideas, and these are to some extent enacted. 
Over against these are the rhythmic chants and ejaculatory refrains 
that form simple motor suggestions or reverberations. The latter 
are the only ones " danced " in our modern sense of " dance." 

47 Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poesie Lyrique en France au Moyen 
Age, 1904; Bedier, Les Plus' Anciennes Danses Frangaises, Revue des 
Deux Mondes, Jan. 15, 1906, p. 398. 



NARBATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE 69 

dances were aristocratic to the point of making modern 
investigators doubt the existence of the ( popular ' cus- 
toms." 48 English dance songs have already been exam- 
ined. Let us turn to Icelandic usage. Yigfusson 49 tells 
us that the " dance, in full use accompanied by songs 
which are described as loose and amorous " — lyrical 
pieces these seem to be — appears at the end of the eleventh 
century. Icelandic danz comes to mean song; and flimt, 
loose song, and danz are synonymous words. The rimur, 
or epical paraphrases, with matter like that of our ballads, 
first appear about the middle of the fourteenth century. 
Almost all Icelandic sagas and romances, even the histor- 
ical books of the Bible, were turned, we are told, into such 
lays or ballads. " The heathen heroic poems were cer- 
tainly never used," says Yigfusson, " to accompany a 
dance. Their now and meter are a sufficient proof of 
that." The word dance points, wherever found, to a new 
fashion introduced from Erance and spreading quickly 
over Europe. The old words would not serve for this 
new French art, which brought its own name even to Ice- 
land. Icelandic evidence is the earliest that we have for 
the dance songs of Scandinavian countries, and the early 
Icelandic dance songs were, it would appear, lyrical and 
amatory, like the early French and English dance songs. 
The employment of heroic romantic narrative material 
belongs to a later stage. 

In Denmark, courtly society of the later middle ages 
danced to narrative ballads, and the pieces closely resemble 
the Child ballads. But Danish literature seems to know 
no other song, no body of purely lyrical movement songs. 

48 The Popular Ballad, p. 97. 

49 Cleasby-Vigfusson, Icelandic Dictionary, under danz. 



70 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

The wealth of lyric poetry appearing in England and 
France and Germany was unknown in Denmark. It has 
no erotic lyric poetry. The ballad was practically the 
only form, we are told, in which the people expressed 
their feelings. The Danish ballads are very valuable. 
" We possess," says Steenstrup, " 40 ballad manuscripts 
of the period prior to 1750, while Sweden possesses 10, 
the oldest antedated by many Danish." The Danish bal- 
lads were preserved by high-born ladies of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries, who did fine service in collecting 
into manuscripts the songs current in the castles of the 
period. 

The Danish pieces show their connection with the dance, 
as do most dance songs, in their very texts, and they even 
show how the dance was conducted. Here are some 
specimen lines : 50 

Midsummer night upon the sward, 
Knights and squires were standing guard. 

In the grove a knightly dance they tread 
With torches and garlands of roses red. 

In sable and martin before them all 
Dances Sir Iver, the noblest of all. 

To the king in his tower strong 
Floats the noise of the dancing throng. 

" Who is yon knight that leads the dance, 
And louder than all the song he chants'? " 

Proud Elselille, No. 220. 

bo These and other examples are cited by Steenstrup, The Medi- 
eval Popular Ballad, p. 12. Translated by E. G. Cox. 



NARRATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE 71 

Now longs the king himself 

To step the dance; 
The hero Hagen follows after, 

For them the song he chants. 
So stately dances Hagen. 

Hagen's Dance, No. 465. 

It was Mettelil, the count's daughter, 
She stepped the dance for them. 

No. 261. 

There dances Sir Stig, as light as a wand, 
With a silver cup in his white hand. 

No. 76. 

JIndividual ballads reveal by internal testimony that 
they were used for the dance : 



Step lightly o'er the green plain — 
The maid must follow me; 



Step up boldly, young knight; 
Honor the maidens in the dance. 



No. 241. 



No. 244. 



Stand up, stand up, my maidens all, 
And dance for me a space; 
And sing for me a ballad 
About the sons of Lave's race. 

No. 366. 

An account of the Ditmarsh folk of Holstein by Johann 
Adolfi (Neocorus) written in 1598, says that the people 
have adapted nearly all their songs to the dance, in order 
to remember them better, and to keep them current, 51 

5i ChroniJc des Landes Dithmarschen, edited by F. C. Dahlmann, 
i, p. 177; "Nichtess weiniger isst tho vorwunderen (den up dat de 



72 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

The dances he describes are like the Danish dances, with 
singing by a " foresinger," and choral response and 
refrain. There were also, as in our own ring-dance 
songs, whole pieces where all the participants sang as 
they danced. 

There is little or nothing of the Danish type of self- 
labeled dance songs among the Child pieces. All but a 
few of the Danish ballads have refrains. Those lacking 
them are mostly late importations or translations. The 
movement is often nimble and rapid. On the other hand, 
of 1250 versions of the English ballads, about 300, i. e., a 
fourth, have refrains. 52 

As to origins, the Danish ballads do not help the com- 
munalists, but the contrary. The dancing for which they 
were used — some were employed for entertainment of 
other kinds, like riding or rowing — was the dancing of 
the high-born; both in content and movement, they seem 
suitable for this purpose. Both Grundtvig and Steen- 
strup seem to be satisfied with the hypothesis of minstrel 
authorship for them. They offer no suggestion of the 
responsibility, for the type, of festal village throngs, or 
of the throngs of primitive times. And it is interesting 
to note that when Steenstrup seeks to restore the Danish 
ballads to their older and truer form, and to rid them of 
spurious accretions, one of his first steps is to shear away 
various types of repetition, as " padding." 53 

Gesenge edder Geschichte deste ehr gelehret unnd beter beholden 
worden unnd lenger im Gebruke bleven, hebben se de alle fast den 
Dentzen bequemet), dat se nha Erf ordering der Wortt und Wise des 
Gesanges," etc. 

52 The Popular Ballad, p. 74. 

53 The Mediceval Popular Ballad, pp. 75-77. 



JSTAKKATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE 73 

At this point, something should, no doubt, be said with 
reference to the ballads of the Faroe Islands. They have 
been brought much into the foreground, in the discussions 
of the genesis of the ballads, anol afford to communalists 
their chief stronghold ; 54 although Steenstrup advises 
caution 55 in using them for help in understanding older 
ballad forms. Their recollection of Saga and Eddie 
poetry is strong, and this knowledge must have blended 
with knowledge of the poetry of the middle ages. More- 
over popular ballads, he says, were taken up by priests and 
learned people. Several types of verse are to be noted in 
Earoe folk-song; but mostly the introduction of Danish 
ballads, supposed to have begun in the sixteenth century, 
has affected them. In the Earoes, in the preceding cen- 
tury at least, as, in less degree, in our own fast-dying-out 
ring-game or play-party songs of young people, throng 
dancing of the old circle type, with linked hands, was 
still preserved. The dancing is to singing rather than to 
instrumental music, again as in our ring-games; and as 
in the latter, all take part in the singing and all join in 
the refrain. Sometimes spontaneous improvised lines or 
verses, still as in our ring-games, arise out of the occasion 
itself. 

The classic report of the Faroe dances was made by 
Pastor Lyngbye in 1822, who left descriptions of them. 
Their dance-themes are derived from Norwegian or 
Icelandic sources, a favorite subject being the " hero 

54 « The ballad-genesis is more plainly proved for the Faroes than 
for any other modern people" (Gummere, The Popular Ballad, p. 
69). 

55 See The Mediceval Popular Ballad, p. 7. 



74 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

Sigurd." They dance to historical ballads, like the 
Danes, 56 but to religious and lampooning ballads as well. 
There are many lyric-epics, like the Danish ones we have 
mentioned. Indeed, the Icelanders know and use ballads 
in the Danish language. The fishermen also have rude 
dances, sometimes to songs of their own creation. Pastor 
Lyngbye tells of one, often utilized for argument by 
Professor Gummere, concerning a fisherman, pushed by 
his comrades into the center of the throng, while they 
improvised verses upon a recent mishap which had befallen 
him. The text of the song is not preserved, so we cannot 
place its type. We have no right to call it a ballad ; most 
probably it was not. From what we are told of them, 
these improvised fishermen pieces sound analogous to our 
own ranch-hand, cowboy, lumberman, or negro improvisa- 
tions, or to the occasional spontaneous ventures of our 
own ring-dances. They are upon events of the moment, 
of interest to members of the circle involved. They are 
fashioned on or are imitations of, songs of better type, of 
higher descent, and they are markedly crude and poor. 
Further, the Faroe fishermen pieces are sung to hymn 
tunes or to familiar airs, not to invented melodies, or to 
traditional melodies — not at least to melodies traditional 

56 Our earliest testimony concerning the Faroe dances is to be 
found in the Faroa Beserata of Lucas Debes, Kopenhagen, 1673. He 
writes, p. 251, that " the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands are little 
inclined toward useless pastimes or idle gaiety, but content them- 
selves mostly with singing psalms . . . only at marriages or at 
Christmas time do they seek amusement in a simple circle dance, 
one grasping another by the hand while they sing old hero-songs." 
Pastor Lyngbye's much-quoted Fcerfiiske Quceder, etc., was published 
in 1822. See also N. Annandale, The Faroes and Iceland, Oxford, 
1905. The whole matter of Faroe folk-song was cleared up satisfac- 
torily by H. Thuren in his Folke Saamgen paa Fcerpeme, 1908. 



NARRATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE 75 

from ancient times. 57 The Faroe songs teach us nothing 
as to the genesis of the lyric-epic type, for they them- 
selves preserve and continue imported fashions. All in 
all, there is nothing to be learned from the Earoe dance- 
song customs that runs contrary to evidence from other 
sources. Rather do they bear it out. And certainly we 
cannot look to them as mirroring par excellence what is 
oldest. 58 

57 The type of song now used by Shakers, Holy Rollers, and other 
dancing religious sects ought to be a point of corroborative interest. 
They probably resemble the Salvation Army type of hymn. 

58 For German, an excellent display of dance-song material may be 
found in Franz Bohme's Geschichte des Tanzes in Deutschland, 
Leipzig, 1886. In chapter xv, " tiber Tanzlieder," he groups his 
material into classes, to show the varied character of the content. 
He gives amatory songs first place, as the most frequent accompani- 
ment of the dance, with many examples. Historical songs, old hero 
songs, and mythic pieces (his second class), were sung, he thinks, 
in the oldest period, for the dance. But his evidence for this is the 
hero songs of the Faroes, concerning which we have evidence from 
the seventeenth century, and the testimony of Neocorus (1598) con- 
cerning the Ditmarsh folk of Holstein. The bearing of this evidence 
has already been considered. The third class he names consists of 
ballads or epic folk-songs, for which his examples for Germany are 
meager. This class, he says, was " in full bloom " in the Romance 
languages and in England, as sung at the dance — a hasty and mis- 
taken generalization. A fourth class consists of lampoons, vitupera- 
tions, satires, etc., abundantly illustrated. This is the class of dance 
songs which is often improvised. His next class consists of bird 
and animal songs, as of the nightingale, cuckoo, heron, owl, fox, etc. 
Riddle, wishing, and wager songs, and (rarely) religious songs con- 
stitute the last classes. In the second part of his history, the author 
prints 356 specimens of dance songs and melodies, in chronological 
sequence. Among these illustrative dance songs the epic folk-song, 
the ballad of the Child type, is the type playing the least conspicuous 
role. How any scholar who examines Bohme's display of mediaeval 
dance-song material — it is strikingly parallel to English dance-song 
material — can retain the belief that lyric-epic pieces like the Child 



76 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

In the Child pieces, the story, not suggestion of move- 
ment or suitability for movement, is the main thing. 
When a refrain is present, the only sure inference to be 
made from its presence is that the piece was made to be 
sung, or possibly to be recited orally. The refrain is 
present in mediaeval as in modern songs which have no 
connection with the dance. But the refrain itself is not 
an essential in the Child pieces as it is in the Danish; 
we have just pointed out that hardly a fourth, by Profes- 
sor Gummere's count, have refrains. In those which are 
surely old, like The Battle of Otterbourne, The Hunting 
of the Cheviot, or Judas, no refrain is present. It is not 
then a constant feature, but occurs variably. lSTor is it 
constant even for individual ballads, but fluctuates, appar- 
ently, with the melodies to which they were sung. If the 
Child ballad, or its archetype, was a dance song, the refrain 
formula ought to persist above all else, through oral tradi- 

pieces were conditioned first of all by mediaeval dances, is hard to 
understand. They seem to be a lyric type least to be associated with 
such usage. 

It is true that Professor Bohme, whose book was published in 
1886, begins with the view that " Tanzlieder waren die ersten 
Lieder," " Beim Tanze wurden die altesten epischen Dichtungen 
(erzahlende Volkslieder) gesungen, durch den Tanz sind sie veran- 
lasst worden . . .," "Die alteste Poesie eines jeden Volkes ist eine 
Verbindung von Tanz, Spiel, und Gesang." But his material does 
not bear out his preliminary statements, nor is he insistent upon the 
narrative song as the earliest dance song, as his book proceeds. 
He tells us, p. 230, that we learn the origin and the form of dance 
songs best from the South German Schnadahupfln, short two- or 
four-line songs, to familiar melodies, often improvised (see his 
fourth class) by singers and dancers. Among these songs, the he- 
roic element hardly appears, and the historic never. A careful 
survey of the citations in Bohme's Geschichte des Tanzes should 
disillusion believers in the ballad as the characteristic type of medi- 
aeval dance song, or as the leading lyric type of dance genesis. 



NARRATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE 77 

tion and dance usage, as it does in the dance or ring-game 
songs of which we are sure. It is what should identify 
the individual ballads. Moreover, refrains appear very- 
abundantly in the later pieces and in broadsides; that is, 
they are not distanced, the farther we get from the hypo- 
thetical dance-throngs with which they are supposed to 
be bound up. 

When the English and Scottish ballads do use the 
refrain, they use it in the art way, not in the folk way. 
It is something extraneous, introduced from the outside, 
varying for the same ballad, subject to modification or 
replacement at the will of the singers, not part of the 
fabric of the song. And like the refrains of the art songs 
of the middle ages, carols, or roundels, or ballades, it comes 
at regular intervals. It is not handled like the repetitions 
of traditional dance songs, usually the most stable element 
of the song, nor in the crude way of much of the repetition 
in unlettered folk-improvisations. Nor should it be con- 
fused with the one-word and two-word songs chanted in the 
choral repetitions of savage tribes. The latter are not 
refrains, but the whole song. 

Refrains and choral repetitions are more necessary to 
other kinds of mediaeval lyric verse than they are to 
ballads. It is not, in fact, the presence of a refrain, or 
of choral repetition that makes the Child pieces ballads. 
What is essential, if pieces are to be classified as ballads, 
is that they tell a story in verse. If they are ballads of 
the Child type they probably exhibit structural or lyrical 
repetition in their presentation of narrative material ; but 
no amount of structural or lyrical repetition makes a piece 
a ballad unless a narrative element is present. Repetition 
of both types is a striking characteristic, for example, of 



78 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

revival hymns, and these had their origin neither as 
ballads nor as dance songs, 59 and it is characteristic, most 
of all, of game and dance songs proper; yet these are not 
ballads. In practice, it is conceded by everybody, com- 
munalists too, that a lyric may have a refrain, or repeated 
lines, as do many of the lyrics from the Elizabethan 
dramatists, yet not be a ballad. Sumer is icumen in has 
a refrain, but is not a ballad; the Bannockburn song has 
a refrain, but is not a ballad. On the other hand, a lyric 
may have no refrain or choral repetition, like King Est- 
mere, or Thomas Rymer, yet be a ballad. As already 
pointed out, the name ballad attached itself to a type 
of lyric which is pretty far removed from the mediaeval 
lyric type of early dance employment. If we are to insist 
on a dance element in a lyric which we are to classify 
as a ballad, we might apply the name, with better right, 
to art lyrics, or to folk lyrics of the fluid traditional 
type, held to unity and memorableness by the refrain, 
which persist in the ring-games of young people and in 
children's songs ; or we should restrict it to genuine dance 
songs, of which we have many of equal age with the 
majority of ballads which have come down to us. 

In the English and Scottish ballads, dancing plays 
hardly any role. It is referred to a fair number of times ; 
but as a recreation for the lords and ladies who appear 
in the ballads it plays a less striking part than does the 
game of ball, its rival and a recreation with which it was 

59 Compare " Incremental repetition made up the whole frame 
of The Maid Freed from the Gallows simply because such ballads 
were still part and parcel of the dance" (The Popular Ballad, p. 
117). Repetition is emphasized as the most characteristic feature of 
ballads, pp. 117-134, etc. 



NAKBATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE 79 

often combined. It is far less frequent than reference 
to songs and to minstrelsy. Mostly the allusions are to 
dancing of the more modern type, accompanied by the 
music of instruments; and they bear testimony to the 
coming of dance-modes from France. A few typical pas- 
sages are the following: 

Seek no minstrels to play, mother, 

No dancers to dance in your room; 
But tho your son comes, Leesome Brand, 

Yet he comes sorry to the town. 

Leesome Brand. 

There was two little boys going to the school, 

And twa little boys they be, 
They met three brothers playing at the ba, 

And ladies dancing, hey. 



The Two Brothers. 



I'm gauin, I'm gauin, 

I'm gauin to Fraunce, lady, 
When I come back, 

I'll learn ye a dance, lady. 



Bob Boy. 



Another text ends 



Or 



I hae been in foreign lands, 

And served the King o' France, ladie; 
We will get bagpipes, 

And we'll hae a dance, ladie. 



Get dancers here to dance, she sais, 

And minstrels for to play; 
For here's my young son, Florentine, 

Come here wi me to stay. 

The Earl of Mar's Daughter. 



80 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

Two might have reference to dancing of the older type: 

Her father led her through the ha T 
Her mither danced before them a'. 

The Cruel Brother. 

When dinner it Was past and done, 

And dancing to begin 
We'll go take the bride's maidens, 

And we'll go fill the ring. 

ben then cam the auld French lord, 
Saying, Bride, will ye dance with me? 

"Awa, awa, ye auld French lord, 
Your face I wowna see." 

Fair Janet. 

Fair Janet, with its theme of probation by dancing, closely 
resembles certain Scandinavian and German ballads, but 
has lessened the part played by the dance test. 

The internal evidence that the English and Scottish 
ballads were used as dance songs is very meager, com- 
pared, for example, with the very abundant internal 
evidence that they were sung. But in practice, few 
scholars would now make special claim that they were 
used as dance songs. No doubt they were, here and there, 
as in late times, we have seen, were Barbara Allen and 
The Two Sisters, in this country. The refrains of several 
might connect them with the dance, as Mrs. Brown's 
The Bonny Birdy (no. 82), or The Maid and the Palmer 
(no. 21). But most sound more suitable for recital or 
singing than to accompany rhythmic motion. Fitted to 
dance tunes they might be used as dance songs, but typi- 
cally they were composed for other purposes. It is pretty 
hard for the student of real dance song to feel that the 



NARRATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE 81 

mass of the Child pieces, or their archetypes, developed 
from the folk-dance. Mediaeval rural throngs, like their 
descendants to-day, probably danced mostly to something 
already familiar, and in itself suitable; more rarely they 
may have danced to their own spontaneous but inconse- 
quential and impermanent improvisations. The typical 
mediaeval dance song was, however, more lyric than epic. 
The English and Scottish ballads are as epic as they are 
lyric. 

There is a classic passage in The Complaynt of Scot- 
land® 1549, by which we can check pretty well our 
assumptions and conclusions. The author of The Com- 
playnt makes his " shepherds " (pretty literary and 
classical shepherds they are, genuine shepherds of the 
" Golden Age ") tell tales, sing songs, and afterwards 
dance in a ring. Among the 48 tales with which they 
amused themselves, alongside Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 
Arthurian romance, and classical stories, as of Hercules, 
or of Hero and Leander, are listed the tale of " robene 
hude and litil ihone," and the tale of the " zong tamlene " 
(Tamlane). Among the 36 songs, are the Henry VIII 
Pastance with gude companye, The frog cam to the myl 
dur, The battel of the hayrlau, and The hunttis of cheuet 
— probably the song that Sidney praised ; also The 
perssee and the mongumrye met, i. e., The Battle of Otter- 
bourne. The Child pieces referred to thus far have been 
either told or sung, as we should expect. Then comes a . 
list of 30 dance pieces — most of them obviously such, as 
Al cristyn mennis dance, The gosseps dance, The alman 
haye, The dance of Tcyrlrynne, Schaik a trot, etc. The 

eo Edited by J. A. H. Murray, for the Early English Text Society, 
1872, vol. 1, p. 63. 



82 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

list is headed by The Hunt Is Up, the tune of which is 
well fitted for dancing. No Child pieces appear. Num- 
ber 92, Robene hude, is probably a chanson de Robin (see 
Cotgrave), or Robin Hood and Maid Marian piece. 
There were many Robin Hood dances, and they are not to 
be identified with the Robin Hood ballads. Number 93, 
Thorn of lyn } is not the ballad Tamlane, listed among the 
recited pieces, but the very different and wholly appro- 
priate song of Young Thomlin, licensed in 1557-58. 
Number 108, Ihonne ermistrangis dance, is the one pos- 
sible Child piece of the 30 ; but neither Mr. Eur ni vail nor 
Mr. Murray believes it to be identical with any of the 
four ballads involving Armstrongs (Johnny Armstrong, 
Johnny Armstrong's Last Goodnight, Jock o the Side, 
Dick of the Cow) which have come down to us. The 
Armstrong ballads in Child's collection are hardly suitable 
as dance songs. 

Should not the Complaynt's roll of tales, songs, and 
dance songs, read very differently, had the English and 
Scottish ballads been the typical songs for the dances of 
rural throngs % The ballads which are mentioned are not 
mentioned as dance songs, and they are in highly literary 
and aristocratic company. The dance songs which are 
mentioned seem to be exactly of the suitable type which 
we should expect. 

Much dance-song material, primitive, mediaeval, and 
modern — the latter in our still-existent ring-dance songs 
— is available, from which to make observation and to 
generalize. The tendencies to be inferred from it are 
exactly the reverse of those assumed by Professor Gum- 
mere, and currently accepted in America. 61 

6i That belief in dance origin, emergence from the illiterate, com- 



NARRATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE 83 

1. When songs already existent are used as communal 
dance songs, they tend to retrograde to simple repetitions 
of striking lines or titles. If narrative, they are likely to 
lose the story. As for primitive dance songs, they are 
never narrative. 

2. The repetitions of communal dance songs are much 
more abundant than the repetitions of the ballads, and 
they belong more genuinely to the fabric of the song. 
They are not of the symmetrical art type, of regular re- 
currence, the refrain type proper, but are cruder, or more 
pervading. Often some striking formula recurs over and 
over, and is the main song. For ballads proper, the 
refrain is not the most stable element but the most 
fluctuating. 

3. There is no tendency for dance songs, whether situa- 
tion songs or dialogue songs, to develop epic elements or 
to become " refined and ennobled by tradition," i. e., to 
become real ballads. 62 Real ballads used as dance songs 
tend to decay, through the wearing process of dance usage. 
Songs used as dance songs do not tend to develop into 
ballads, but rather to become simplified to some striking 
line or formula. 

4. As regards form, genuine communal dance songs 
are not necessarily or invariably in ballad stanza, but of 

munal improvisation, epic development, and the priority of dialogue 
and situation songs, has current American acceptance, is shown by 
the fact that such belief is set forth, without hesitation or question, 
in the two latest American ballad anthologies : Professor W. M. 
Hart's English Popular Ballads, 1916, and Professor G. H. Stempel's 
A Book of Ballads, 1917. 

6 2 Gummere, The Popular Ballad, p. 76, " The refining and en- 
nobling processes of tradition " . . . " ennobled and enriched in its 
traditional course/' p. 28, etc. 



84 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

more fluid and variable pattern. They exhibit no one 
fixed stanzaic type. Sometimes they consist of but one 
short stanza. 

We are hardly justified by the evidence, then, in saying 
that the English ballads represent a lyric type which has 
been " divorced from the dance, originally their vital con- 
dition." The process is not that ballads, originating in 
the dance, find permanence and gain epic character when 
cut loose from it. Rather do already existing ballads find 
themselves utilized for, adapted to, and mutilated in dance 
song usage. There is no testimony that the structure of 
the English ballads rests upon the dance, but rather the 
contrary; for theirs is not the structure of the normal 
and more appropriate dance song. That the dance songs 
of primitive peoples, and the earliest dance songs that we 
have in English, and our latest surviving dance songs are 
all three lyric, not lyric-epic, does not point to the origin 
of the English ballad type by " divorce from the dance." 

There are three forms of psychic suggestion in poetry ; 
first, emotional, as in the simple lyric ; second, ideational, 
as in the narrative; third, motor, as in the refrain type, 
coupled with simple imperatives. The first and second 
types may be associated with action in the sense of conduct, 
and they are so associated in primitive poetry. They 
are sometimes continued traditionally in what are called 
" dances," but are really drama ; that is, they become 
histrionic. The third type is the only form fundamentally 
associated with the dance, and it is psychologically simple, 
i. e., presentative not representative. This psychical dis- 
tinction should be borne in mind in study of the subject. 
Not all lyrics tempt to movement, and narratives (ballads 



NARRATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE 85 

proper) never, one would think, tempt to measured move- 
ment of the dance type. 

Association with the dance of the festal multitude may 
be in place for the Erench ballade, or for the Italian 
ballata, but our own ballads do not include pieces which 
were primarily dance songs. That the English ballad 
type had its genesis in the fclk-dance seems to be not only 
unproved but unlikely. Those who believe in dance gen- 
esis for the lyric in general may find in the dance the 
ultimate genesis of the lyric-epic type which we call ballad. 
But, in that case, no attempt should be made so sharply 
to differentiate the ballad in origins from other types of 
lyric verse. Those scholars who hold both positions at the 
same time, affirming that ballads originated as dance songs, 
yet that they were manifestly composed in some way 
utterly different from other lyric verse, are maintaining 
positions which are incompatible. 

To the present writer, the gift of song seems as instinc- 
tive in man as the gift of rhythmic motion, not a develop- 
ment from the latter. Both were his from the first. No 
festal dancing chorus of a unanimous throng is needed to 
account for the song of birds, and song, the expression 
of emotion, not motion, may well be as instinctive in man 
as in birds. Other lyric forms, as lullabies, conjuring or 
healing songs, labor songs, love songs, are as primitive as 
choral dance songs, not offshoots of the latter. Children 
sing instinctively, and they make their own songs, with- 
out waiting for the communal inspiration of group danc- 
ing; and it is commonly assumed that the development 
of the child mirrors that of the race. The beliefs that 
from the dance emerged music and rhythmical utterance, 



86 THE BALLAD AND THE DANCE 

or song, that dance songs are the earliest lyrics, that 
narrative songs are the earliest dance songs, and that the 
English ballad type had its genesis in the dance, are neither 
borne out by the evidence, nor intrinsically probable. 



CHAPTER III 

BALLADS AND THE ILLITERATE 

" A ballad/' says F. Sidgwick, " is, and always has 
been, so far from being a literary form that it is in its 
essentials not literary, and it, we shall see, has no single 
form. It is of a genre not only older than the Epic, older 
than Tragedy, but older than literature, older than the 
alphabet. It is lore, and belongs to the illiterate." 1 
" You cannot write a popular ballad ; in truth you cannot 
even write it down. At best you can but record a number 
of variants, and in the act of writing each one down you 
must remember that you are helping to kill that ballad." 
Professor Gummere speaks of " The homogeneous and 
unlettered state of the ballad-makers " and remarks that 
" Indeed, paper and ink, the agents of preservation in the 
case of ordinary verse, are for ballads the agents of de- 
struction." 2 Professor Charles S. Baldwin refers to 
" unrecorded tales ; tales not written but sung ; tales com- 
posed, not for gentlefolk, but for the common unlettered 
people. These are the ballads." " Beginning in what- 
ever way among the common people," he continues, " they 
were cherished, circulated, and handed down among the 
common people." 3 

i The Ballad, pp. 7, 39. 

2 The Popular Ballad, and " Ballads " in A Library of the World's 
Best Literature. 

3 English Medioeval Literature, pp. 242, 331. 

87 



88 BALLADS AND THE ILLITEEATE 

When contemporary English and American scholars 
speak of " ballads " they have reference to narrative songs 
of the character of those included by Professor F. J. 
Child in his English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Al- 
though Professor Child's name, " popular " ballads, is 
much the safer name, it is customary to speak of the pieces 
in his collection as " traditional " ballads, and to think 
of oral preservation as a test of their inclusion. In fact, 
it is pretty widely customary at the present time to exag- 
gerate the part played by oral tradition in preserving these 
pieces, to endow it, as it were, with a monopoly which it 
should not have, and to be over-insistent upon the associa- 
tion of them with the illiterate. In consequence, it is also 
customary to speak with misleading certainty as to their 
origins, and as to the humble and unlettered character of 
the audience to whom they were addressed, and to place 
emphasis upon their total lack of literary quality. 

It may be well as a corrective to re-examine some of 
their characteristics. Let us look first at the sources of 
their recovery, recalling as a preliminary a few more of 
the accepted generalizations. " The important fact of 
ballad transmission," says Professor Walter Morris Hart, 
" is their singing or recitation from memory by people 
who do not read or write." 4 " Our typical ballads," says 
Professor G. H. Stempel, " have come to us pretty straight 
from unlettered people living in out of the way places, 
people of no converse with literature." 5 Or, to quote 
from Professor Gummere, " The ballad ... is a narra- 
tive lyric handed down from generation to generation of a 
homogeneous and unlettered community," ; and " . . . 

4 English Popular Ballads (1916), p. 47. 
s A Book of Ballads (1917), p. xxiii. 



SOUKCES OF EECOVEKY 89 

Oral transmission, the test of the ballad, is, of course, no- 
Avhere possible save in an unlettered community." 6 

I SOURCES OF RECOVERY 

Some of Professor Child's texts have been recovered 
from oral tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 
turies in England and Scotland. Yet a surprising num- 
ber, in fact, the majority of the best texts, have not come 
from oral sources. They have been preserved in books, 
or printed sheets, or manuscripts. Some of his most 
valuable sources for ballads were the Pepys Manuscript 
and the Percy Manuscript; and neither Pepys nor Percy 
cared only for oral sources, or even mainly for them, when 
they were gathering their pieces together. Professor 
Child, like his predecessors, drew also upon Elizabethan 
and later song-books, or Garlands, and he derived a large 
number of his texts from printed broadsides. In much 
the same way, in contemporary collections of folk-songs, 
made in our own country, some of the best " finds " have 
come from manuscript books, into which, like the Eliza- 
bethan song-lovers, the owners copied their favorite pieces. 
Such transcriptions have helped to preserve innumerable 
valuable texts. Contrary to the belief of many leading 
scholars, reduction to print does not " kill " good ballads, 
but helps to keep them alive. Insistence upon oral trans- 
mission, as an essential for their inclusion, would have 
barred a majority of Professor Child's best texts. It is 
hardly exaggeration to affirm that the most effective texts 
in the Child collection are those which have least claim to 
oral transmission. 

6 The Popular Ballad, p. 13; "Ballads" in Library of the World's 
Best Literature, II, p. 1307. 



90 BALLADS AND THE ILLITEKATE 

Even when typical ballads have been recovered from 
oral tradition, such recovery is not usually from the most 
unlettered or even from people of average gifts ; but rather 
from special individuals. More likely than not, they are 
those among their immediate circle having the most vigor- 
ous minds and the best memories — those of outstanding 
rather than humble personality. Every collector of folk- 
lore knows the experience of coming upon these special 
people and deriving from them his best texts. The cele- 
brated Mrs. Brown of Falkland, that source par excellence 
of superior ballads, was no spokesman of a humble and 
homogeneous society but the daughter of an Aberdeen pro- 
fessor and the wife of Dr. Brown, minister of Falkland. 
She learned her ballads by hearing them sung by her 
mother or by an old maid-servant. " Mrs. Brown," says 
Dr. Robert Anderson in his letter to Bishop Percy, " is 
fond of ballad poetry, writes verses, and reads everything 
in the marvellous way." 7 Mrs. Brown was far from illit- 
erate, but it would never do to rule out her ballads from 
the Child collection. The gap would be great. Even had 
Mrs. Brown somehow derived her songs ultimately from 
the peasantry, the likelihood would remain that they were 
not songs originating among the peasantry and carried over 
the borders of some local community to pass down from 
generation to generation. They were probably the popu- 
lar songs, mediaeval in style, of a period long antecedent, 

7 John Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eight- 
eenth Century, vol. vii. (1848), pp. 88-90. 

The body of Danish ballads, collected by Grundtvig, comes mostly 
from the manuscripts of noble Danish ladies of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, who wrote them down as they were current 
in aristocratic usage. Though less cultured than Mrs. Brown, these 
ladies were far from humble and illiterate. 



SOURCES OF RECOVERY 91 

forgotten in their original homes and lingering in her 
day only in the byways. In general, the fact that songs 
have been preserved in remote districts and among the 
humble, is no proof that they were composed in such 
places and by such people, spreading from local impro- 
visation into wider currency ; but it is rather proof of the 
contrary. The popular songs for entertainment in social 
centres, the current songs of upper life, or of the main 
population, soon fade from the knowledge of the audiences 
which knew them first, to be replaced by those of later 
composition. At the point of emergence for popular song, 
lateness is an asset. But by the time that new songs have 
won currency on the stage, or in the city, or let us say, 
in the castle, or the market-place, or the ale-house, or the 
fair — the old have found their way into remote places and 
are likely to persist there, especially among that more fixed 
and sheltered element of the population, the women. As 
for the crude pieces that the " people " sometimes impro- 
vise — not very often or very characteristically at that 8 
— they lack memorable quality except as they borrow from 
or are based upon better pieces; and they lack impetus 
for, and modes of, diffusion. Where something of the 
kind may be studied now, in existing society, observation 
shows that such pieces, whether composed by cowboys or 
ranchmen or lumbermen or negroes, or in social gatherings 
of the more sophisticated, are those which are soonest to 
die. Certainly the songs which are most vigorous among* 
such peoples are those reaching them in some other way, 
with a pedigree of bygone vogue behind them. The real 
songs emerging from the unlettered are too crude, ungram- 

8 Usually they are very short, and often some kind of personal 
satire or lampoon, and are based on some familiar model. 



92 BALLADS. 'AND THE ILLITEKATE 

matical, fragmentary, uninteresting to attract any one but 
the student of folk-song. And usually he, too, passes them 
by; for mostly he is stalking or seeking to salvage pieces 
of older style and obviously pedigreed. 

To bring up a few examples, when we first hear of 
Barbara Allen, it is a stage song, liked by Samuel Pepys: 
" In perfect pleasure I was to hear her [Mrs. Knipps, an 
actress] sing her little Scotch song of Barbara Allen/'' 
A hundred years later, Goldsmith heard it from " our old 
dairymaid." Today, if we are to hear some of the popular 
songs, sentimental or martial, romantic or political of the 
Civil War, we are more likely to come' upon them among 
villagers, surviving in remote and conservative commu- 
nities, than we are in the circles which knew them first. 
After the Ball was a popular stage song in the 1890's. It 
is still vigorous in village communities and on western 
ranches, though it long ago died out in the city parlor and 
on the stage. The sentimental Lorena, which had tremen- 
dous vogue in the middle decades of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, lingers as a favorite song among mid-western cow- 
boys. One of the ballads in Fletcher's Knight of the Burn- 
ing Pestle, There was a Romish Lady, of Paris properly, 
can be identified as the ancestor of a but slightly mutilated, 
authorless narrative in the ballad style, existing in manu- 
script song-books in the Central West, and having faint 
currency elsewhere. 

It is to be expected surely that an older type of English 
song, mediaeval in style,— replaced by another style and 
another set of characters after the advent of printing and 
the break-up of mediaeval conditions, — should linger 
among nursemaids and " ancient dames," among the spin- 
ners, pipers, shepherds, and weavers of remoter commu- 



SOURCES OF RECOVERY 93 

nities, often with singular fidelity of text. But it should 
not be taken as evidence that those from whom they are 
recovered were either the creators or the inspirers of them. 
It is surprising that this should need emphasis; but in 
general, the process in literature, as in language, in games, 
in social usages and often in manner of garb, is likely to be 
a downward process, from the higher to the lower, rather 
than one of ascent from lower to higher. Here are some 
random illustrations. The game of " tag " now linger- 
ing only among children, was according to W. W. Newell 
the diversion of maids of honor in the days of Elizabeth ; 
and similarly, the knightly practice of holding tourna- 
ments now survives only in the game usage of children. 
Pepys's stage song of Barbara Allen was used sometimes 
as a play-party song early in the nineteenth century in 
New England. The Maid Freed from the Gallows has 
been used in children's games. On the whole the best ex- 
amples of the sinking from higher to lower may be seen 
in the texts of the ballads themselves. 9 Lord Randal has 
become in America, Jimmy Randall, Johnny Randall, 
Jimmy Ramble, Jimmy Randolph, and the like; he has 
sunk to the social class of those who sing of him. 10 The 
Two Brothers, Sir John and Sir Hugh, of the Scotch 
ballad have passed, in some American versions, into two 
little Western schoolboys. The game song Here Comes 
Three Dukes A-Boving has become in the Central West, 
Here Comes Three Ducks A-Boving. To pass to an 

9 The contrary process, bringing improvement, is very rare. An 
example is Mr. C. J. Sharp's text of the American negro ballad 
John Hardy, improved by incorporating some stanzas from The Lass 
of Roch Royal. See also J. H. Cox, John Hardy, in The Journal of 
American Folk-Lore, vol. xxxn, p. 505. 1919. 

10 See pp. 122, 190. 



94 BALLADS AND THE ILLITERATE 

illustration from language, the pronoun you, the plural of 
thou, had its origin, when applied to one person, in the 
usage of the Eoman Emperors, who liked to be addressed 
as counting for more than one human being. Then it 
became a courtesy-form in the usage of aristocratic Europe. 
In English speech, it has now been generalized for all 
classes, even the humblest, and the old singular has disap- 
peared from the everyday language. But no one who ad- 
dresses a single person as you recalls the Koman Emper- 
ors, or the aristocrats of Europe from whom this usage 
is derived. 11 

It forces the plausibilities to assume that village throngs 
evolved the type exemplified by pieces like Lord Thomas 
and Fair Annet, King Estmere, Lord Lovel, Marie Ham- 
ilton, Lady Isabel, Lady Maisry, and all the other ballads, 

11 Some further examples of the same process are easily cited. 
Riddles were a highly literary type of literature in the Old English 
period; compare the Mnigmata of Aldhelm (following Symposius), 
Taetwine, and Eusebius, and those in the vernacular preserved in the 
Exeter Book. In Middle English, riddling has lost vogue in higher 
literature but appears in ballads. The Cupids and Venuses and 
pierced hearts of the mediaeval and renaissance amourists now linger 
almost exclusively in popular valentines. A Maypole song, forgotten 
elsewhere, survives in the ring-games of Georgia negroes (Loraine 
Darby in Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxx, 1917). Literary 
animal-tales, as of the frog and the mouse, were common in the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A song, " The moste strange 
weddinge of the Frogge and the Mouse," was entered in the Sta- 
tioners' Register in 1580; and the words and music of such a song 
have come down to us. " The froggie came to the mill door " was 
sung on the Edinburgh stage in the eighteenth century, according 
to J. A. H. Murray in his edition of The Complaynt of Scotland. 
"The Frog's Courtship," by the twentieth century, survives only as 
a nursery song. 

Perhaps more significant is the oft-expatiated-upon fact that the 
debris of pagan religions is found in folk-lore and literature alike. 



14 



°n 



jW 



/*0 



./•■/ 



lot 



THE BALLADS AND LITERATURE 109 

vocabulary of Middle English, not to daily life. The 
stock alliterative epithets, " brown brand/' " merry men/' 
" doughty Douglas/' " bold baron/' " proud porter/' " wan 
water/' remind one of the " kennings," so. helpful to the 
technique and to the memory of the Old English scop; 
also of the alliterative formulas of Langland and of the 
circumlocutory phrases of the poets of the age of Pope. 
The ballads preserve many archaic literary traits along 
with the emotions and culture of a vanished age. There 
are no set alliterative epithets or legacy-formulas or man- 
nerisms of older aristocratic life in the improvisations of 
fishermen, cowboys, ranch hands, and negroes, genuinely 
communal and homogeneous as are the conditions under 
which they live. 

Mrs. Brown of Falkland's texts contain literary words 
like paramour, a rhyme-word in her texts, dolour, travail. 
Paynim appears in King 'Estmere — and sounds like 
Percy's word. Adieu, hardly a folk-word, appears in 
Andrew Lammie, The Gardener, and other pieces; and 
Robin Hood and the Banger actually begins with a refer- 
ence to Phoebus. The first line of Robin and Gandeleyn, 
the text of which is one of the earliest ballad texts remain- 
ing, reads, " I heard the carpyng of a clerk." Traces of 
the retention of French accent, the language of the upper 
classes and the court, appear in words like pite, forest, 
menye, certdyne, chamber, contree, and there is frequent 
transference of it to native words like lady, water, thous- 
and, having properly initial accent, or to names like 
Douglas, London. 35 To cite a few more points of style, 

35 Some prosodists might hold that these " wrenched accents " 
are only instanees of " -pitch accent " and derive them from Old 
English. Others may feel that they are merely crudenesses made 



110 BALLADS AND THE ILLITEEATE 

the premonitory dream (of a gryphon) is used in Sir 
Aldingar, in the way so characteristic of Old French and 
Middle English literature; frequent for instance in 
Chaucer and Langland ; and many other mediaeval literary 
conventions are reflected. There are chanson d'aventure 
openings, as in Robin and Gandeleyn, and reverdi openings, 
as in many of the Robin Hood ballads. The satirical 
legacy, that favorite device of the ballads, had great popu- 
larity as a literary convention in the fourteenth and fif- 
teenth centuries. 36 The English and Scottish ballads 
shade off into literary and other verse of many types: 
The Rose of England into allegory, The Geste of Robin 
Hood into the epic chanson, Sir Aldingar into romance, 
The Battle of Otterboume into verse chronicle. Many, 
like the riddle ballads, show affiliations with the debate 
or dialogue verse, the estrifs and verse contests of mediaeval 
literature. The Gray Cock is an aube, Barbara Aliens 
Cruelty is nearly a pure lyric, Johnny Campbell is a 
coronach or lament for the dead, The Holy Well and 
The Bitter Withy are carols, and The Carnal and the 
Crane is a theological discussion in verse. It would be 
futile perhaps to look for some wholly unique ballad arche- 
type, differing absolutely from other forms of verse to 
be recited or sung ; or to insist upon emergence of " gen- 
uine " ballads from a single source, whether villagers, 
improvisers at folk-dances, some specific class of bards or 
minstrels, or from the singers of the church. 

The ballads show strophe forms and basic meters of the 

possible by the fact that the ballads were sung not read. But the 
final accent is too clearly marked, and is used too definitely and 
too frequently, at least in the earlier pieces, to be explained as 
something merely casual and fortuitous. 

36 See E. C. Perrow, The Last Will and Testament in Literature. 



THE BALLADS AND LITEKATUKE 111 

types arising, it is usually thought, from the music ana 
hymns and chorals of the mediaeval church ; and that such 
should he the case seems natural enough. The contrary 
process, that the people themselves should create a regular 
strophe, or regular strophes, with consistent meter, is not 
borne out by evidence or by analogy. Poetry of genuine 
popular creation does not know what meter is, save as it 
appropriates it — at that partially and inconsistently — 
from some model. Similarly the refrain when it is pres- 
ent — which is in about a fourth of the ballads — is used 
in the literary or art way, the way of the sophisticated. 
It does not resemble the crude repetitions of genuine pop- 
ular creations. It is used as it is is in the hallade, the 
roundel, or the mediaeval religious songs of many 
types, that is, in a way that is consistent and symmet- 
rical. 

Last, let us look at two ballads which have been accepted 
as pre-eminently characteristic, and see where they stand 
as regards " art." Edward has been called " unimpeach- 
able " by Professor Child, " one of the most sterling of 
the popular ballads." It is thought by Professor W. M. 
Hart to show, not conscious art at all, but rather the 
simplest and earliest stage of ballad development which the 
Child pieces have preserved to us. 37 It is too familiar to 
need quotation in full. A few stanzas from the begin- 
ning and the close will serve to recall it. 

Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Arts and Science. Vol. 
xvii. 

37 A favorite line of evolution with Professor Hart is from the 
simplicity and brevity of Edward to the epic complexity of the Geste 
of Robin Hood. Yet within the Robin Hood ballads themselves may 
be observed a line of decay, from the early Geste to the brevity and 
inferiority of the later pieces. 



112 BALLADS AND THE ILLITERATE 

" * Why dois your brand sae drap wi bluid, 
Edward, Edward, 
Why dois your brand sae drap wi bluid, 

And why sae sad gang yee ? ' 
1 I hae killed my hauke sae guid, 
Mither, mither, 
I hae killed my hauke sae guid, 
And I had nae mair bot hee 0.' 

" ' Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid, 
Edward, Edward, 
Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid, 

My deir son I tell thee 0.' 
' I hae killed my red-roan steid, 
Mither, mither, 
I hae killed my reid-roan steid, 

That erst was sae fair and frie 0. . . .' 

" ' And what wul ye leive to your ain mither deir, 
Edward, Edward, 
And what wul ye leive to your ain mither deir? 

My deir son, now tell me ? ' 
' The curse of hell frae me sail ye beir, 

Mither, mither, 
The curse of hell frae me sail ye beir, 
Sic counseils ye gave to me 0.' " 

We may postpone, as yet, generalization concerning this 
ballad, noting only its striking parallelism in structure, a 
parellelism carried out to a degree that brings us face to 
face with art. Repetition often aids in the avoidance 
of heavy or involved construction in ballad technique, and 
nowhere more than here. 

The second ballad is the American text of The Hang- 
man's Tree, of the composition of which Professor Kit- 
tredge draws a sketch, .when sung for the first time by its 



THE BALLADS AKD LITERATURE 113 

" improvising author. The audience are silent for the 
first two stanzas, and until after the first line of the third 
has been finished. After that they join in the song." 
This, many think, is the characteristic method of ballad 
authorship — improvisation in the presence of a sympa- 
thetic company, which may even participate in the process. 
When " the song has ended, the creative act of composi- 
tion is finished." The author is " lost in the throng." 
Parenthetically, one would like to inquire what was the 
part played by the festal dance, insisted upon by one 
author, 38 in the making of this genuine ballad. 
The text is short enough to be quoted in full : 

" { Hangman, hangman, howd yo hand, 

howd it wide and far! 

For theer I see my feyther coomin, 
Riding through the air. 

"'Feyther, feyther, ha you brot me goold? 
Ha yo paid my fee? 
Or ha yo coom to see me hung, 
Beneath tha hangman's tree?/ 

"'I ha naw brot yo goold, 

1 ha naw paid yo fee, 

But I ha coom to see yo hung 
Beneath the hangman's tree/ 

" ' Hangman, hangman, howd yo hand, 
howd it wide and far! 
For theer I see my meyther eoomin, 
Riding through the air. 

38 Gummere, The Popular Ballad, p. 117; The Cambridge History 
of English Literature, vol. n, p. 460. 



114 BALLADS AND THE ILLITEEATE 

"'Meyther, meyther, ha yo brot me goold? 
Ha yo paid my fee? 
Or ha yo eoom to see me hung, 
Beneath tha hangman's tree?* 

ef ' I ha naw brot yo goold, 
I ha naw paid yo fee, 
But I ha eoom to see yo hung 
Beneath tha hangman's tree.' 

" ' Hangman, hangman, howd yo hand, 

howd it wide and far! 

For theer I see my sister eoomin, 
Riding through the air. 

111 Sister, sister, ha yo brot me goold? 
Ha yo paid my fee? 
Or ha ye eoom to see me hung, 
Beneath the hangman's tree?' 

u i I ha naw brot yo goold, 

1 ha naw paid yo fee, 
But I ha eoom to see yo hung 

Beneath tha hangman's tree.' 

" l Hangman, hangman, howd yo hand, 
howd it wide and far! 
For theer I see my sweetheart eoomin, 
Riding through the air. 

" l Sweetheart, sweetheart, ha yo brot me goold? 
Ha yo paid my fee? 
Or ha yo eoom to see me hung, 
Beneath tha hangman's tree?' 

" ■ I ha brot yo goold, 
And I .ha paid yo fee, 
And I ha eoom to take yo from 
Beneath tha hangman's tree.' " 



THE BALLADS AND LITERATURE 115 

Is not this, like Edward, perfect art? Neither piece 
could be improved, as regards cohesion, cumulative effect, 
economy of words, use of suspense, and climax — all of 
which belong to art. In general, it is students of folk- 
song who have given their time to backward study, not to 
the study of contemporary folk-song and its processes, 
who are able to maintain so high an opinion of the 
products of improvisation and of the creative ability of 
folk-groups ; or the powers of the unlettered. Those who 
have dealt much with living popular poetry and its proc- 
esses are less sanguine. Human ways and powers do not 
change very much in matters of this kind, and to the 
student of living folk-song, the assumption of the creation, 
by an improvising singer and villagers, of the lyric type 
of which these pieces present one of the " simplest stages," 
is far from favored by the evidence. Especially, the brief, 
consistent telling of a story, by the question and answer 
method, is of late, not early literary development. Gen- 
uine folk-creations know no such thing. Eor that matter 
they know no such thing as the brief and consistent telling 
of a story. There is abundant living evidence that folk- 
creation does not incline to the narrative song, but merely 
to the song. In both primitive poetry and modern com- 
munally improvised popular poetry, finished well-con- 
structed narrative is beyond the powers of the creators of 
whom we have knowledge or evidence. 

Place beside Edward or The Hangman's Tree a folk- 
improvisation by the cowboys, — surely not inferiors as 
poetic creators of the mediaeval peasants — and the dis- 
crepancy in favor of the mediaeval pieces is marked. 

Since they were composed for oral purposes, for the 
ear not for the eye, nor for manuscript preservation, the 



116 BALLADS AND THE ILLITEEATE 

wonder should be, no doubt, that the English and Scottish 
ballads exhibit so much as they do of literary quality and 
skilful technique. Some are inferior and some better; 
but they do show " art," or degrees of it ; they are memor- 
able and effective for the oral purposes for which they 
were intended. In form, as well as in themes and char- 
acters, they suggest a high descent. Contrast, where dates 
are available, early pieces with late, or American versions 
with their Old World parents, and make inference from the 
mass. The crudity and the unliterary quality increase 
with the lapse of time, and by popular preservation. The 
epic completeness and effectiveness of the Child pieces is 
likely to sink downward to simplicity or fragmentariness. 
Judging from the mass of recorded examples, there is no 
testimony in existent folk-song that the process was an 
upward process from popular simplicity and brevity to 
pieces of the length and quality of the Geste of Robin 
BoodP 

The distinction between poetry of art, which is litera- 
ture, and poetry of the people, which is not, especially 

39 Professor Gummere's latest position was that the ballad is of 
communal origin, of dance origin, but grows more and more away 
from the dance-song in the direction of the epic. " Once choral, 
dramatic, with insistent refrain and constant improvisation, the 
ballad came to be a convenient form for narrative of every sort 
which drifted down the ways of tradition" (Cambridge History of 
English Literature, vol. n, p. 456). A song humble in origins may 
develop beyond its crude beginnings, subjected to the "refining and 
ennobling processes of tradition," or "improved by some vagrom 
bard" (The Popular Ballad, 76-79, 250). It is not till this stage 
of " improvement " has been reached that it becomes, in our sense, a 
ballad. Compare Professor Kittredge, who "rules the minstrel out 
of court," and maintains that he could never have created the bal- 
lads, but that genuine ballads are spoiled when they pass through 
his hands. 



THE BALLADS AND LITERATUKE 117 

when there is insistence npon manner of origin, can be 
held much too rigidly and forced too far. The distinction 
takes care of itself if we think only of the destined 
audiences of the two types of poetry, and if we do not 
insist upon some mystical special manner of composition, 
under choral and festal conditions now obsolete. When 
we do insist upon a sharply differentiated origin for 
" genuine " pieces, and then try to apply such distinction 
consistently to any given body of folk-song, genuinely 
recovered from oral tradition, solid ground fails us. A 
definition which in itself denies to the ballad that it is 
a form of literature, denies it " art," and insists that it 
is the property of the unlettered, is a definition that is 
nearly useless for purposes of application. Fortunately, 
those who so define ballads never apply their definition in 
practice; just as they never in application restrict what 
should be termed ballads to songs that were originally 
dance-songs. If they applied their theories rigorously 
and consistently, they would have left nearly no ballads to 
which to apply them. 40 

It is enough to say that in English we mean by a 
ballad a certain type of lyrical narrative or narrative 
song or song-tale, which appears rather late in literary 
history; and we may discard as unessential for defining 
this type references to the origin of such pieces in the 

40 Professor Gummere had a way of so defining his subjects that 
he robbed himself of most of the material which he proposed to 
treat. In his article on " Folk-Song " in the Warner Library of 
the World's Best Literature, when he finished elucidating what 
genuine folk-song is, he had left himself no valid material for il- 
lustrating his species. He had to follow most of his examples by 
qualification and apology ; " few of the above specimens [of folk- 
song] can lay claim to the title in any rigid classification." 



118 BALLADS AND THE ILLITEEATE 

dance — an origin rather more characteristic of other 
mediaeval lyric types than it is of the English and Scottish 
song-tales — and references to their emergence from illit- 
erate throngs. We can then call The Wreck of the Hes- 
perus 41 a ballad, as well as Sir Patrick Spens; we can 
call anonymous song-tales like King Estmere and Edward, 
which never had any connection with the dance, ballads; 
and we can call Professor Child's St. Stephen and Herod, 
with its Cristus natus est of the eleventh line intact, or 
King John and the Bishop of Canterbury, with no marks 
of crudity or deterioration upon it, ballads; and we can 
do so with no less right than if they had been popularly 
transmitted and transformed. 

Eolk re-creation of traditional ballads, of both melodies 
and texts, is something that no student of them would deny. 
It is not the same thing as folk-origin for them, though the 
confusion is often made. Unlike the assumption of folk- 
creation, it necessitates no hypothesis endowing the un- 
lettered with the power to create verse in uniform stanzas 
dignified by the consistent use of rhyme, and terse and 
telling and memorable in expression; no insistence upon 
origins in the dance ; no insistence upon the superiority of 
the creative powers of the throng over those of the indi- 
vidual ; and no faith in the special ability of the ignorant 
and the illiterate to establish a lyric type impossible for 
those of higher place. If folk re-creation, not folk-crea- 
tion, were all that was meant when the " communal " 
nature of popular poetry, as over against " art " poetry, 
is under discussion, much controversy and ambiguity and 

4i Before it can be called a popular or a folk or traditional ballad, 
sense of the original author, or of personal proprietorship in a bal- 
lad must be lost. 



THE BALLADS AND LITERATURE 119 

confusion would have been saved. When a piece has been 
popularly preserved in oral tradition and transformed 
thereby, the product is truly enough the work of and the 
property of the people; 42 but that does not mean that the 
same piece might not have been a ballad before the illiterate 
ever touched it in a modifying way. 

42 It is in this sense that Mr. Cecil Sharp may be called a com- 
munalist; indeed, it may fairly be said that all students of folk- 
song are, in this sense, communalists. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE BALLAD STYLE 

The style of the English and Scottish ballads has often 
received treatment, and their appeal for the reader who 
is in reaction from book verse has been stressed by critics 
of many types. Certain conspicuous mannerisms have 
had attention from scholars and special students and have 
been utilized for special pleading. They are thought to 
afford ballad differentice and to throw light upon the 
origin of the ballad as a lyric type. That traditional 
ballads constitute a distinctive species is held to be due, 
on the evidence of stylistic mannerisms, not to their oral 
or sung character or to their destination as popular poetry, 
but rather to their origin among the folk, especially among 
illiterate folk. 

In the following pages no attempt will be made to repeat 
what has been well said by others in characterization of the 
ballad style. Various features of it will be examined 
which have been brought into the foreground of discussion 
because they seemed pivotal. Usually the style of the 
ballads is analyzed without much reference to the pieces 
which exist alongside them in folk tradition. This is 
partly because of the tendency of many collectors to re- 
strict their salvage to pieces of the Child type, ignoring or 
discarding many related types of song of equal or greater 
currency among the folk. In consequence of such 
specialization, the ballads are often endowed too distinc- 

120 



INCREMENTAL REPETITION 121 

tively with traits which they share with other folk-song. 
A study of ballads, whether mediseval or later, which does 
not take into account their background, tends to foster too 
sharply drawn distinctions or too rigid generalizations, 
and to make the results arrived at less dependable. 

I INCREMENTAL REPETITION AND OTHER BAEEAD 

MANNERISMS 

" Iteration," we are told, " is the chief mark of the 
ballad style; and the favorite form of this effective figure 
is what one may call incremental repetition, The ques- 
tion is repeated with the answer ; each increment in a series 
of related facts has a stanza for itself, identical save for 
the new fact, with the other stanzas. Babylon furnishes 
good instances of this progressive iteration." x And again, 
" Incremental repetition is the main mark of the old 
ballad structure." 2 This repetition is supposed to be 
bound up with derivation from the dance, as many cita- 
tions will show. " It furnishes," we are told, " the con- 
nection with that source of balladry — not of mended 
ballads — in improvisation and communal composition, 
with the singing and dancing throng, so often described 
by mediaeval writers." References are many to "incre- 
mental repetition, obviously related to movements of the 
dance " ; 3 or we are assured that the ballad was " meant 
in the first instance for singing and connected as its name 
implies, with the communal dance." By incremental rep- 

i F. J. Gummere, " Ballads " in A Library of the World's Best 
Literature, vol. in, p. 1308. See also The Popular Ballad, pp. 117- 
134. 

2 " Ballads " in The Cambridge History of English Literature, 
vol. ii, pp. 449, 459. 

3 Democracy and Poetry, p. 188. 



122 THE BALLAD STYLE 

etition is meant the ballad repetition not in the refrain 
way but structurally or for emphasis by which successive 
stanzas reveal a situation or advance the interest by 
successive changes of a single phrase or line. A stanza 
repeats a preceding one with variation but adds something 
to advance the story. Lyrical repetition of this type is a 
marked characteristic of the Child pieces, a large propor- 
tion having this structural feature. It is upon this char- 
acteristic that many scholars rest their belief that the very 
structure of the ballad, the type itself, rests chiefly on the 
dance, the communal dance of primitive or of peasant 
throngs. The four examples best illustrating it, those 
usually cited, are Lord Randal, first heard of in the reper- 
tory of a seventeenth-century Italian singer at Verona 
named Camillo ; 4 Edward, a ballad in literary Scotch, 
first known from the Percy manuscript ; The Maid Freed 
from the Gallows, a ballad told with perfect symmetry by 
the question and answer method in a version recovered in 
America in the nineteenth century; and Babylon, the 
earliest text of which comes from Motherwell's Min- 
strelsy, published in 1827. 

As often pointed out, the date of recovery of a ballad 
is no sure indication of the antiquity of a ballad, or the 
lack of it; but it should not be left out of account when 
other evidence fails. The chronology of the English and 
Scottish ballads lends no support to the belief that incre- 
mental repetition was a characteristic of archetypal ballads 
or that it points to their emergence from the dance. If the 

4 Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, Essays on the Study of Folk- 
Song (1886). "Lord Ronald in Italy," p. 214. The Delia Cruscans 
thought of " improving " this song. The poisoning feature of the 
plot is more characteristic of Italian than of English story. 



ISTCKEMENTAL KEPETITION 123 

repetitional type is that having greatest antiquity, repe- 
tition should appear characteristically in the earliest bal- 
lads, less often in the late — those which were composed 
after the dance origin so often assumed ceased to condi- 
tion the structure. Yet incremental repetition does not 
appear in our oldest ballad text, the thirteenth-century 
Judas, nor is it a normal feature of those early ballad 
types, the outlaw and chronicle ballads. 5 Unfortunately 
for the theorists who hold it to be fundamental, it appears 
most frequently in later texts, not earlier, and more often 
in the broadsides than in oral versions. It does not appear 
in the fifteenth-century Inter Diabolus et Virgo, the direct 
ancestor of Riddles Wisely Expounded, in the texts of 
which it does appear ; so that Professor E. E. Bryant re- 
marked, much puzzled, " it is a clear case of an early ver- 
sion not being nearly so ballad-like as a whole group of 
later ones." 6 Says Mr. John Eobert Moore, " Unfortu- 
nately . . . the facts seem to make little provision for 
the theory [i. e. of incremental repetition as fundamental 
to the ballad structure] ; for it is the simple ballads which 
most often have fixed refrains, and the broadsides which 
exhibit the most marked use of incremental repetition. 
Furthermore, when oral tradition adds a refrain to an or- 
iginal printed broadside, it is only a simple refrain with- 
out the structural device of accretion which Professor 
Gummere considers so characteristic." 7 Professor H. 
M. Belden has pointed out that the output of the nine- 
teenth century ballad press, accessible in the British 

s There is something like it in Robin and Gandeleyn and in the 
learned or at least sophisticated St. Stephen and Herod. 

6 A History of English Balladry, 1913. 

7 The Influence of Transmission on the English Ballads, Modem 
Language Review, vol. XI (1916), p. 398. 



124 THE BALLAD STYLE 

Museum, shows this structural characteristic very mark- 
edly. 8 It has been showu by Mr. Phillips Barry that 
iteration is a mark of the late not the earlier versions 
of Young Charlotte,, whose history he has traced backward 
nearly a hundred years. 9 Iteration can be developed, he 
shows, as an effect of continuous folk-singing. 

Structural repetition is not a certain test of what is and 
what is not a ballad and it is not to be insisted upon in 
definition of the type, first because it is not always pres- 
ent in ballads, and second, because it is as characteristic 
of other folk lyrics as it is of ballads. Just as a ballad 
can be a ballad without the presence of choral repetition 
or a refrain, so it can be a ballad without showing incre- 
mental repetition. The. only dependable test elements in 
ballads are lyrical quality and a story element, and, for 
traditional folk-ballads, anonymity of authorship. 

An excellent example of structural repetition in medi- 
aeval song other than ballads is afforded by the following 
satire against women : — 10 

Herfor & therfor & therfor I came, 
And for to praysse this praty woman. 

Ther wer in wylly, 3 wyly ther wer", — ■ 
A fox, a fryyr, and a woman. 

Ther wer 3 angry, 3 angry ther wer, — 
A wasp, a wesyll, & a woman. 

s Review of Gummere's The Popular Baltad, Journal of English 
and Germanic Philology, vol. vin, p. 114. 

9 William Carter, The Bensontown Homer, Journal of American 
Folk-Lore, vol. xxv, pp. 156-158. 

io Bodleian MS. Eng. Poet. E. 1. f. 13. Percy Society, vol. 
lxxiii, p. 4. 



INCREMENTAL REPETITION 125 

Ther wer 3 cheteryng, in cheteryng ther wer, — 
A peye, a jaye, & a woman. 

Ther wer 3 wold be betyn, 3 wold be betyn ther wer, — 
A myll, a stoke fysche, and a woman. 

Or by a song on a fox and geese, which opens — n 

The fals fox camme unto oure croft, 
And so our gese full fast he sought; 
With how, fox, how, etc. 

The fals fox camme unto oure stye, 
And toke our gese there by and by. 

The fals fox camme into oure yerde, 
And there he made the gese aferd. 

The fals fox camme unto oure gate, 
And toke oure gese there where they sate. 

The fals fox camme to oure halle dore, 
And shrove oure gese there in the flore, etc. 

Or by this lively pastoral, which might possibly be a 
dance song, but which is not a ballad. 12 

I haue xn oxen that be fayre & brown, 

& they go a grasynge down by the town; 

With hay, with howe, with hay! 

Sawyste thow not myn oxen, you litell prety boy? 

I haue xn oxen & they be ffayre and whight, 
& they go a grasyng down by the dike; 

ii Cambridge University Library, M. S. Ee, 1, 12. There are 18 
stanzas. 

12 MS. Balliol 354. Fliigel, Anglia, vol. xxvi, p. 197. Ed. Dy- 
boski, E. E. T. S., Extra Series, 101 (1907), p. 104. 



126 THE BALLAD STYLE 

With hay, with howe, with hay! 

Sawyste not you myn oxen, you lytyll prety boy? 

I haue xii oxen & they be fayre and blak, 

And they go a grasyng down by the lak; 

With hay, with howe, with hay! 

Sawyste not you myn oxen, you lytell prety boy? 

I haue xn oxen, and they be fayre and rede, 

& they go a grasyng down by the mede; 

With hay, with howe, with hay! 

Sawyste not you myn oxen, you lytyll prety boy? 

Or by the Song of the Incarnation of about 1400, which is 
quoted in full elsewhere. 13 

Repetition and parallelism are also characteristic of that 
popular type of mediaeval song the religious carol, like the 
well-known Cherry Tree Carol, classed by Professor Child, 
because of its narrative element and its currency in oral 
tradition, as a ballad. Other carols in ballad stave and 
showing very close relation to ballads — they have both 
structural repetition and a narrative element — are The 
Holy Well, telling of the childhood of Jesus, and The 
Bitter Withy, closely related to the preceding, perhaps as 
much ballad as carol. Some less ballad-like carols show- 
ing structural repetition are The Five Joys of Christmas, 
Bring Us Good Ale, Born is the Babe, Out of the Blossom 
Sprang a Thorn., This Rose is Railed on a Ryse, etc. 14 
The following carol is not in ballad stave but shows a 
type of structural repetition, or parallelism: — 15 

is From the Sloane MS. 2593. See p. 175. 

i* Edith Rickert, Old English Carols (1910); Jessie L. Weston, 
Old English Carols (1911). See especially Balliol MS. 354 and 
Sloane MS. 2593. 

is Hill MS., ed. Dyboski, E. E. T. S. 101 (1907), p, 7. 



INCREMENTAL REPETITION 127 

Make we mery in hall & bowr, 
Thys tyme was born owr Savyowr. 

In this tyme God hath sent 
Hys own Son, to be present, 
To dwell with vs in verament, 
God that ys owr Savyowr. 

In this tyme that ys be-fall, 
A child was born in an ox stall 
& after he dyed for vs all, 

God that ys owr Savyowr. 

In this tyme an angell bryght 
Mete in sheperdis vpon a nyght 
He bade them do a-non ryght 
To God that ys owr Saviowr. 

In thys tyme now pray we 

To hym that dyed for vs on tre, 

On vs all to haue pytee, 

God that ys owr Saviowr. 

The carol of the six rose branches, " All of a rose, a 
lovely rose, All of a rose I sing a song," applies the secular 
liking for the rose, as a poetic flower, in a poem of religions 
symbolism, in sequence form: — 16 

The fyrst branch was of gret myght, 
That spronge on Crystmas nyght, 
The streme shon over Bedlem bryght, 

That men myght se both brod and longe. 

The nde branch was of gret honowr, 
That was sent from hevyn towr, 
Blessyd be that fayer flowr! 
Breke it shall the fendis bondis. 

16 From the same manuscript. There are many dramatic carols ox 
carols in the question and response form between Mary and an angel 
or between Mary and her son, in the Hill manuscript. 



128 THE BALLAD STYLE 

The thyrd branch wyde spred 
Ther Mary lay in her bede, 
The bryght strem in kyngis lede 

To Bedlem, ther that branch thei fond. 

The imth branch sprong in to hell, 
The fendis bost for to fell, 
Ther myght no sowle ther in dwell, 
Blessid be that tyme that branch gan spryng. 

The vth branch was fayer in fote, 
That sprong to hevyn tope & rote, 
Ther to dwell & be owr bote 
& yet ys sene in priestis hondis. 

The vith branch by & by, 
Yt ys the v joyes of myld Mary, 
Now Cryst saue all this cumpany, 
& send vs gud lyff & long. 

Incremental repetition and parallelism of line structure 
are especially characteristic of popular religious poetry, 
in particular of revival hymns. It is well-known that 
" repetition to the point of wearisomeness is a favorite 
form of revival hymns." 17 To cite illustration, the fol- 
lowing song called Weeping Mary, recovered in the 
twentieth century among the negroes, affords an example 
of parallelism : 

If there's any body here like Weeping Mary, 

Call upon Jesus and he'll draw nigh, 

He'll draw nigh. 

glory, 'glory, glory, hallelujah, 

Glory be to God who rules on high. 

17 E. B. Miles, Some Real American Music, Harper's Magazine, 
vol. 109, pp. 121-122. 



INCREMENTAL REPETITION 129 

If there's anybody here like praying Samuel, 
Call upon Jesus, etc. 

If there's anybody here like doubting Thomas, 
Call upon Jesus, etc. 

This song is thought by Mr. H. E. Krehbiel to be an orig- 
inal Afro- American song, and he printed it as such. 18 . He 
limits his claim for the originality of negro songs to their 
religions songs, their " shouts " and " spirituals." But 
Weeping Mary can be traced to the singing of a white 
woman who had learned it at a Methodist protracted meet- 
ing somewhere between 1826 and 1830, long antedating its 
appearance among the negroes. 19 There were many 
stanzas of repetitional pattern and the whole might be 
continued indefinitely. 20 A similar history may be noted 
for a song included among T. P. Fenner's collection of 
Religious Folk Songs of the Negro as sung on planta- 
tions: 21 

Wonder where is good old Daniel, 
Way over in the Promise Lan', etc. 

Wonder where's dem Hebrew children, etc. 

Wonder where is doubtin' Thomas, etc. 

Wonder where is sinkin' Peter, etc. 



Compare with this the old revival hymn — 



22 



is Afro- American Folk-Song, 1914. 
is See Modern Language Notes, vol. 33, p. 442, 1918. 
20 See note 57, p. 158. 
2i New Ed. 1909, p. 107. 

22 See " Old Revival Hymns " in The Story of Hymns and Tunes 
by Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth, 1896. 



130 THE BALLAD STYLE 

Where now where are the Hebrew children? 
They went up from the fiery furnace, etc. 

Where now is the good Elijah? etc. 

Where now is the good old Daniel? etc. 

The climax was reached with 

By and by we'll go to meet him, 
By and by we'll go to meet him, 
By and by we'll go to meet him, 
Safely in the Promised Land. 

It might be mentioned also that the " chariot " frequent 
in negro spiritual? played a role in older revival poetry, 23 
But whatever their origin, negro revival hymns and planta- 
tion songs, like the folk-songs of white people, abound in 
instances of structural repetition and in sequences of 
various types. Three examples may be given : 24 

Save Me, Lord, Save Me 

I called to my father; 

My father hearkened to me. 
And the last word I heard him say 
Was, Save me, Lord, save me. 

I called to my mother, etc. 

I called to my sister, etc. 

I called to my brother, etc. 

23 Compare H. H. Milman's popular hymn, The Chariot of Christ, 
or The Last Day, 

24 Marshall W. Taylor, A Collection of Revival Hymns and Planta- 
tion Melodies, 1883. 



INCREMENTAL REPETITION 131 

I called to my preacher, etc. 
I called to my leader, etc. 
I called to my children, etc. 

He Set My Soul Free 

Go and call the bishops in, 
G-o and call the bishops in, 
Go and call the bishops in, 

And ask them what the Lord has done. 

Go and call the elders in, etc. 

Go and call the deacons in, etc. 

Go and call the leaders in, etc. 

Go and call the Christians in, etc. 

Resurrection of Christ 

Go and tell my disciples, 
Go and tell my disciples, 
Go and tell my disciples, 
Jesus is risen from the dead. 

Go and tell poor Mary and Martha, etc. 
Go and tell poor sinking Peter, etc. 
Go and tell the Roman Pilate, etc. 
Go and tell the weeping mourners, etc. 

Natalie Curtis Burlin's texts, though somewhat shrunken 
from those of the same songs in earlier collections, show 
the same liking for sequences : — 25 

25 Negro Folk-Songs, recorded by Natalie Curtis Burlin. 1918. 



132 THE BALLAD STYLE 

ride on Jesus, 
Ride on, Jesus, 
Ride on, conquerm' King. 

I want t'go t'Hebb'n in de mo'nin'. 

Ef you see my Father, 

yes, 
Jes' tell him fo' me, 

yes, 
For t' meet me tomorrow in Galilee: 
Want t'go t'Hebb'n in de mo'nin'. 

Following verses may substitute the words " sister " and 
" brother " for " mother " and " father." A second song, 
of similar pattern, is this : — 

Good news, Chariot's comin', 

Good news, Chariot's comin', 

Good news, Chariot's comin', 

An' I don't want her leave-a me behin'. 

Dar's a long white robe in de Hebb'n I know, etc. 

Later verses open — 

Dar's a starry crown in de Hebb'n, I know, etc. 

Dar's a golden harp in de Hebb'n, I know, etc. 

Dar's silver slippers in de Hebb'n, I know, etc. 

Repetition in iterative or sequence form is also charac- 
teristic of contemporary -student songs, as Forty-Nine Bot- 
tles A-Hanging on the Wall, or the Song of a Tree {The 
Green Grass Grows All Round), or the old-time tem- 
perance songs, like The T ee-T otallers Are Coming, or 



INCREMENTAL REPETITION 133 

The Cold-Water Pledge. And it may be a characteristic 
of popular laments, as The Lyke-Wake Dirge. It is found 
in nursery songs like One, two, buckle my shoe, or One 
little j two little, three little Injuns/' etc., and in lullabies, 
like many which have been preserved from the fifteenth 
century. Most fundamentally, it is characteristic of orally 
preserved game and dance songs, which have been illus- 
trated in another chapter; but here it is of the inter- 
weaving type, is stable and part of the fabric of the song, 
not iteration of the type characteristic of the ballads. 

Incremental repetition appears very strikingly in Ameri- 
can folk-songs, all of British importation, in dialogue 
form, which are never classified as ballads. An instance is 
the familiar : — 

where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? 

where have you been, charming Billy ? " 

" I have been for a wife, she's the treasure of my life, 

She's a young thing but can't leave her mother." 

He is asked whether his wife can make a cherry pie, a 
feathei bed, a loaf of bread, a "-muly cow," etc., and gives 
humorous responses. In The Quaker's Courtship' the 
wooer says in repetitional stanzas that he has a ring worth 
a shilling, a kitchen full of servants, a stable full of 
horses, etc., and asks if he must join the Presbyterians; 
but he meets rebuff. In Soldier, Soldier, Wont You 
Marry Mef, the soldier answers in lyrical sequences that 
he has no shoes to put on, then that he has no coat, then 
that he has no hat. When the girl has brought these, the 
song ends with the question — 

" How could I marry such a pretty little girl 
When I have one wife to home ? " 



134 THE BALLAD STYLE 

In the familiar The Milkmaid, which sounds like a sur- 
vival of a pastourelle, a maiden is asked in stanzas of the 
iterative type " where are you going, my pretty maid ? " 
whether she may be accompanied, what her father is, and 
what her fortune ? She answers that she is going milking, 
that her father is a farmer, that her face is her fortune, 
etc., and when her questioner follows this last statement by 
the remark " Then I won't have you, my pretty maid," she 
responds with " Nobody asked you," etc. To cite a last 
example of these dialogue folk-songs showing incremental 
repetition, in A Paper of Pins, the wooer offers the girl 
a paper of pins, a little lap dog, a coach and four, a coach 
and six, the key of his heart, and finally a chest of gold, 
if she will marry him. All the offers are refused until 
the last. When this is accepted, he closes the sequence 
with — i 

" Ha, ha, money is all, woman's love is nothing at all. 
I'll not marry, I'll not marry, I'll not marry you." 

Farther, structural repetition is not a mannerism ap- 
pearing in primitive poetry. There is limitless and 
wearisome iteration and choral response, but no telling of 
stories by the question and answer method of Lord Randal, 
Edward, The Maid Freed from the Gallows, and Babylon. 
As for the cowboy pieces, 26 in those which their collector 
indicates as of communal composition, such narrative as 
they have is not presented by incremental repetition or by 

26 An example is afforded by The Song of the " Metis " Trapper 
by Rolette, Lomax, Cowboy Songs, p. 320, the stanzas of which, open 
in sequence, "Hurrah for the great white way," "Hurrah for the 
snow and the ice," " Hurrah for the fke and the cold," " Hurrah for 
the black-haired girls," but the cowboy songs as a whole do not 
exhibit structural repetition. 



INCREMENTAL EEPETITION 135 

the question and answer method but in a far less skilful 
or lyrical way. 

The truth is that repetition, structural or stanzaic, ver- 
bal, of the refrain type, or consisting of interweaving lines, 
may be found in all types of popular poetry, from nursery 
songs to revival hymns. Old French literature is that 
richest in mediaeval lyric poetry and in dance songs, but 
old Erench lyrics and dance songs bear no resemblance to 
ballads and they are plainly aristocratic. Structural iter- 
ation belongs to popular song in general, indeed it is very 
likely to be developed through folk-preservation when it 
did not belong to a song in its original form. It is not 
certain proof of dance origin even among primitive peo- 
ples. It characterizes not only dance lyrics but revival 
hymns, game and labor songs, student songs, lullabies and 
nursery songs, Christmas carols, laments, and songs and 
folk-lyrics in general. It is not a test of the ballad style, 
is not a ballad differentia, since it belongs to other styles 
also. And it is not a test of age for it is not present in 
some of the oldest ballads and is developed in late variants 
of newer ballads. Moreover it is a mannerism easily 
caught and of great assistance in promoting folk-partici- 
pation in singing. The ballad is the only type of folk 
song showing structural repetition or parallelism of line in 
the presentation of narrative, but that is because it is the 
only type of folk-lyric which presents narrative. Struc- 
tural repetition in ballads should not be cited as proof 
that the latter were composed in some manner different 
from other lyric verse, for it is a feature which ballads 
share with folk-song of many types ; nor is its appearance 
in individual ballads proof of the antiquity in type of 
such ballads. 



136 THE BALLAD STYLE 

Besides incremental repetition, other ballad mannerisms 
which have received emphasis are the so-called " climax 
of relatives " and the ballad motive of the legacy, or the 
giving of testamentary instructions. Both are well illus- 
trated by The Hangman s Tree, a text of which is quoted 
in full in another chapter. 27 In neither mannerism may 
certainly be seen proof of antiquity or of the communal 
origin of a ballad. Both appear in the later rather 
than in the earlier ballad texts; and the climax of rela- 
tives — better called a sequence of relatives, or better 
still a sequence merely, for the sequence may be of 
persons other than relatives, or of things 28 — is, as 
we have just seen, a characteristic of revival poetry 
and of general folk poetry as well. Neither mannerism 
appears in Judas, our oldest ballad text, nor in the ballads 
which go back with certainty to the fifteenth century, nor 
in texts from the early sixteenth century. They might 
for balladry, if chronology of appearance count, be termed 
a sign of comparative lateness. And they need not be 
unfailing signs of communal origin. Will and testament 
features played an important part in mediawal litera- 
ture, 29 and by the early modern period their legacy might 
well appear in traditional verse. Like the sequence of 
relatives, the giving of testamentary instructions is a man- 
nerism easily caught and memorable, and it is in no way 
remarkable that it should be found in ballads, alongside 
the " last goodnights," riddling, and other devices of lit- 

27 See p. 113. 

28 See the sequence of kirks in The Gay Goshawk, or of harp- 
strings or of tunes in The Two Sisters. 

29 E. 0. Perrow, Will and Testament Literature. Publications of 
the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, vol. xvn. 



INCKEMENTAL REPETITION 137 

erature of the past. The probability is that the legacy 
feature of the percentage of the English and Scottish bal- 
lads which show it is a literary heritage. The rapidity 
with which an easily caught mannerism may spread may 
be illustrated by the " come all ye " opening of the broad- 
sides, or by the assimilation of the briar-rose motive at 
the end of texts of Fair Margaret and Sweet William, Lord 
Lovel, Earl Brand, and Barbara Allen* or of the stanzas 
beginning — 

" who will shoe your feet, my love, 
And who will glove your hand?" 

of The Lass of Roch Royal. In the texts of Cecil J. Sharp 
and Mrs. Campbell, these stanzas have spread to The Re- 
jected Lover, and The True Lover's Farewell, and even 
to John Hardy, which seems to have been originally a negro 
song. 31 

A certain type of sequence of relatives is rather stock 
in popular song of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 
especially in songs of the death bed or death-bed confes- 
sion type. In The Cowboy's Lament (The Dying Cow- 
boy), which derives from an eighteenth century Irish 
popular song, 32 the speaker asks to have messages sent 
to his mother, his sister, his sweetheart. In Caroline E. 
E. Norton's Bingen on the Rhine, the sequence runs " Tell 
my brothers and companions," " Tell my mother," " Tell 
my sister," " There's another — not a sister." The Dy- 

30 As in C. J. Sharp's text, Folk-Song from the Southern Appala- 
chians, p. 96. 

3i Folk-Song from the Southern Appalachians. See nos. 56, 61, 
87. 

32Lomax, Cowboy Songs, p. 74. For its origin, see Mr. Phillips 
Barry's article, cited p. 207. 



138 THE BALLAD STYLE 

ing Calif ornian, widely known over the United States in 
folk song, runs in the longest of its Nebraska variants, 
" Tell my father when you meet him/' " Tell my mother/' 
" Tell my sister/' " 'Tis my wife I speak of now/' etc. In 
Bury Me not on the Lone Prairie, as in the sea piece 
which was its model, is the same sequence, mother, sister, 
sweetheart, to whom messages are to be delivered. So in 
Buena Vista Battlefield/ 3 messages are to* be sent from the 
dying soldier to father, mother, sweetheart; and in The 
Last Longhorn, & cowboy piece patterned on this type of 
poem — 

An ancient long-horned bovine lay dying by the river; 
There was lack of vegetation and the cold winds made him 
shiver — 

are found " Tell the Durhams and the Herefords," " Tell 
the coyotes," etc. Still another example is afforded by 
A Poor Lonesome Cowboy, " I ain't got no father," "I 
ain't got no mother/' " I ain't got no sister," " I ain't got 
no brother," " I ain't got no sweetheart " — 

I'm a poor lonesome cowboy 
And a long ways from home. 

All this illustrates how easily a familiar pattern, known 
through some well-known song or songs, is assimilated. 
None of the American pieces cited, unless the last, may 
fairly be said to have had communal origin. 

Various other marks of style for the English and Scot- 
tish popular ballads, besides incremental repetition, the 
giving of testamentary instructions, and the sequence of 
relatives — for example, presenting narrative by question 

83 Cowboy Songs, pp. 3, 34, 197. 



DIALOGUE AND SITUATION BALLADS 139 

and answer, the ballad vocabulary, the use of set epithets, 
alliterative formulae, and the like, have been treated in 
other chapters. 

II DIALOiGUEl AKD SITUATION BALLADS AND THEORIES 

OIF DEVELOPMENT 

That situation ballads in dialogue form represent a 
primal type of ballad and that there is development from 
these to length and complexity is a view which is often 
brought forward. According to Professor Walter Morris 
Hart, " the ballad, in its simplest and most typical forms, 
might be called a short story in embryo. It is a song about 
a single situation" . . . "there is development from the 
simple to the complex, from the homogeneous to the het- 
erogeneous . . . the simplest and most homogeneous bal- 
lads or groups of ballads are actually older or representa- 
tive of something older, than the most complex and hete- 
rogeneous. We have already traced this development 
from the relatively simple ballad of Edward to the rela- 
tively complex Gest of Robyn TLode." 34 An adherent 
of the same school formulates this theory of development 
as follows : " Dialogue is the primitive fact ; scenario, 
character, and other explanatory matters come later. The 
older and more primitive a ballad is, generally speaking, 
the greater the proportion of dialogue " . . , " We can 
now understand what Gummere calls communal composi- 
tion and can see the significance ... of such things as 
refrain and dialogue. They are principles of composition. 
They make possible the production of a fairly well-or- 

s* English Popular Ballads (1916), pp. 45, 49. This is the thesis 
of Professor Hart's Ballad and Epic, Harvard Studies and Notes 
in Philology and Literature (1907), ix. 



140 THE BALLAD STYLE 

dered ballad by the common activity of the whole tribe." 35 
This hypothesis of development is quite unproved, and 
tested by the processes of living folk-song and by the songs 
of savage tribes, it is improbable. And an interesting 
feature of the assumption underlying it is its inconsis- 
tency. The writers who hold it affirm that the ballad is 
the earliest universal form of poetry, yet by their own 
theories the early simple forms only later become ballads 
by developing complexity and plot. The ballads are the 
earliest form of song, yet they develop from earlier song. 
The date of recovery of ballads is not a decisive factor 
in determining their antiquity, yet it is to be taken into 
account. Judging by the date of recovery, the situation 
ballads, Edward and Lord Randal — from the simplicity 
of whose structure Professor Hart develops the epic com- 
plexity of the Eobin Hood ballads — are of later rather 
than earlier composition. They certainly come to us in 
late form, as pointed out elsewhere. Edward is told as 
completely and with as telling use of suspense and climax 
as a literary ballad like Rossetti's Sister Helen. It is a 
somewhat doubtful evolution which passes onward from 
the artistic quality of these pieces into the crudeness and 
length of the Robin Hood narratives. But aside from 
the late appearance of the best ballads illustrating the 
" earliest " stage, it should be pointed out that in general 
the presence of dialogue in poetry is a sign of compara- 

35 G. H. Stempel, A Booh of Ballads (1917), pp. xvi, xxvii. 
Possibly this is the view also of Professor F. M. Padelford, who 
speaking of the debate of holly and ivy in mediaeval literature re- 
marks that " like other songs of winter and summer, it harks back 
to that communal period when dialogue was just beginning to emerge 
from the tribal chorus." Cambridge History of English Literature, 
II, p. 431. 



DIALOGUE AND SITUATION BALLADS 141 

tive lateness in composition. It does not appear in the 
epic poetry of early peoples. The speeches of characters 
in Homer, Virgil, Beoivulf are long declamations. So 
in the older dramas, the speeches are long declamations. 
The breaking up of the talk of characters, in narrative 
and dramatic literature, into give-and-take dialogue occurs, 
as it were, before our eyes. In the Old English period 
there is very little in the poetical literature that could be 
called dialogue. The nearest is to be found in the works 
of Cynewulf and his school. It is after the Norman 
Conquest that it begins to enter, in lyric and narrative 
minstrelsy, until dialogue in one form or another, it is 
agreed by scholars, becomes part of the minstrel's and 
the song composer's stock in trade. 36 In Old French lit- 
erature, so largely the source of or so largely influencing 
Middle English literature, dialogue or semi-dialogue ap- 
pears in chansons a danser of literary type between soloists 
and a chorus, in chansons a personnages, or chansons de mal 

36 An excellent example of use of the question and answer method 
is afforded by the early fourteenth century song of a maiden whose 
food was " the primrose and the violet " and whose bower was " the 
red rose and the lily flower," preserved in the MS. Rawlinson D 
914 f 1. It is too properly a song to be termed " literary " but it 
is obviously for sophisticated circles and of the " conscious art " 
type. Middle English religious lyrics afford many examples of 
dialogue songs. 

There is an excellent example of a question and answer lyric, 
between a mother and daughter in the ballad manner in Old Portu- 
guese troubadour poetry, by King Denis (1279-1325), Das Lieder- 
buch des Konigs Denis von Portugal, ed. H. R. Lang (1894), pp. 
xcv, 75 ; Ferdinand Wolf, Studien zur Geschichte der Spanischen und 
Portuguiesischen Nationalliteratur (1859), p. 708. Examples may 
be found also in Old Italian poetry. Dialogue between mother and 
daughter, like other dialogue forms, seems to have been a popular 
troubadour mode. 



142 THE BALLAD STYLE 

mariees, in pastourelles — all these in the form in which 
we have them being of minstrel origin. It appears, as so 
well known, in the elaborate debates, disputes, and the like, 
which the Middle Ages so liked. Erom these lyrical de- 
bates it probably entered the ballades in dialogue form 37 
in which it remained popular for three centuries. Lyrical 
dialogue and question and answer are both characteristic 
enough of late mediaeval " art " song for derivation, when 
they appear in the ballads, from tribal improvisation or 
from that of peasant communes, to be unnecessary and im- 
probable. 

It is known that mediaeval minstrels often recited or 
gave a type of impersonation dramatically. Monologue 
and dialogue were rendered dramatically, though by one 
person. There are clear traces of this in many religious 
narratives and songs. Thus may have been given the 
early religious ballads of Judas and St. Stephen and Herod. 
The presence of dialogue and dramatic situation in such 
abundance in the ballads might well have some relation 
to a dramatic manner of delivery. The more song-like 
lyrical ballads, those with refrains, are not those pre- 
served to us in the oldest texts but come from the Tudor 
period and thereafter. 

Professor Hart's theory of development from the short 
and simple to the long and complex sounds authentic but 
there are many considerations which do not reinforce it. 
It would be easy and plausible, if we discard chronology, 
to build up a theory of development from the short one- 
act plays of the twentieth century to the five-act dramas 
of the Elizabethans ; or from the short story of the nine- 
teenth century to the long novel of the eighteenth ; or from 
37 Helen Louise Cohen, The Ballade (1915), p. 56. 



DIALOGUE AND SITUATION BALLADS 143 

the periodical essays of the eighteenth to many of the 
longer prose types, the sermon, the oration, the treatise, 
the satire, which preceded it. If there is development in 
literature from simplicity to complexity there is also 
development from length and complexity to brevity and 
simplicity. Fair analogy may be drawn with the devel- 
opment in language, as illustrated by the complex inflec- 
tional structure of Sanskrit or Greek compared with the 
simplified analytical structure of present English. There 
is a linguistic tendency to shorten and simplify forms, to 
drop inflections, and to analyse " sentence-words " into 
short elements, co-existent with the tendency, earlier rec- 
ognized, to lengthen monosyllables into polysyllables by 
composition. In the chronology of Indo-European lan- 
guages, the languages of complex structure appear early 
and those simplest in structure come last. And this dual- 
ity of development may be paralleled from literature. 

The mass of the English ballads, or lyrical narratives, 
certainly appear in literary history later than do the 
epics and chansons de geste into which they are supposed 
to develop. Says E. K. Chambers, " The ballad, indeed, 
at least on one side of it was the detritus as the lai had been 
the germ of romance." 38 Professor Ker points out that 
" ... it is certain that the ballads of Christendom in 
the Middle Ages are related in a strange way to the older 
epic poetry. . . . The ballad poets think in the same 
manner as the epic poets, and choose by preference the 
same kind of plot." 39 As the epic and romantic long 
narratives, to be recited or sung, become outworn, new 
lyrical narratives to be recited or sung appear. In any 

38 The Mediwval Stage, I, p. 69. 

39 English Literature: Mediceval, p. 161. 



144 THE BALLAD STYLE 

case, it is not proved that the transition was from ballad 
to epic in medieval literature, from short narratives to 
he recited or sung to long and complex pieces to be recited 
or read. A case could be made out by some one caring to 
elaborate the thesis, for the development from mediaeval 
epic to mediaeval ballad. No material at all, if the facts of 
chronology be scrutinized, can be found to illustrate the 
hypothesis for ballad origins of a " traditional epic process 
working upon material made at a primitive stage not quite 
beneath our sight," while material illustrating the contrary 
chronological order, mediaeval epic narrative, then me- 
diaeval ballad, exists in abundance. We are told that 
" even a mere comparison of early stages, in a Babylon, a 
Maid Freed from the Gallows, with later stages in the 
Robin Hood cycle, ought to place this view [of narrative 
development from dialogue and situation songs originating 
in the dance] beyond denial." 40 But the long epic narra- 
tives of Robin Hood appear early and the more song-like 
ones, from which the former are supposed to develop, come 
later. And when we watch the development of existent 
mediaeval dance songs, or of present-day folk-improvisa- 
tions, preserved under the right conditions, we find noth- 
ing which bears out the hypothesis of development from 
mediaeval song to ballad, to epic. Rather is it contra- 
dicted, if we discard conjecture and stay by fact in our 
consideration of material. 

Since both are folk-poetry and both are preserved in 
tradition, comparison seems especially in place between 
English ballads in dialogue form and game and dance 
songs. The chief collector of the latter, Mrs. Gomme, 41 

40 Gummere, The Popular Ballad, pp. 284-285. 
4i Dictionary of British Folk-Lore, vol. n, p. 500. 



DIALOGUE AND SITUATION BALLADS 145 

holds that game and dance songs in dialogue form are of 
later origin; her opinion is based on much first-hand 
experience with the ways of folk-song. And it is to be 
noted that dialogue and situation songs appear in other 
lyric types beside ballads and game songs. Many carols 
both of the literary and of the more popular types take this 
form and many religious lyrics, and so do laments and 
dirges; and these are preserved in texts antedating those 
of most of the ballads. 

Communal improvised folk-poetry as we can watch it 
among cowboys, lumbermen, negroes, European peasants, 
does not exhibit the ballad of situation in dialogue form 
telling a story. As for primitive poetry, it is rather the 
progenitor of modern poetry and drama in general than 
specifically of a dialogue (ultimately becoming an epic) 
ballad type 42 which makes its appearance during the 
Middle Ages. In neither modern improvised folk poetry 
nor in the choral singing and response of primitive poetry 
is to be found the body of material needed to bear out the 
theory stated at the outset of this chapter. Simple as it 
may seem, to tell a story with completeness and cohesion 
by dialogue is much too difficult for folk art, whether 
mediaeval, modern, or primitive. The safe generaliza- 
tion is that the story song is not a primary but a devel- 
oped type in the evolution of literature, that the story song 

42 An illustration from primitive poetry representing the nearest 
approach which is reached to dialogue ballads is afforded by the* 
harvest-song dance of a Boro chief, a two-line strophe to which his 
wife responds, in two lines of nearly the same words, to be followed 
by the same two lines from a chorus. See T. Whiffen, The 'North- 
West Amazons (1915), p. 199. But such songs of primitive peoples 
are not the special ancestor of that minor lyric type, the ballad, but 
of song of many kinds. 



146 THE BALLAD STYLE 

in which dialogue predominates is still later, 43 and that 
both emerge from a higher origin than unlettered folk- 
improvisation. 

Ill THE " UNIFORMITY " OF THE BALLAD STYLE 

" It is a significant fact," says a well-known writer on 
ballads, 44 " that wherever found, the ballad style and man- 
ner are essentially the same." Many make the same gen- 
eralization. But this is true only in the most general 
sense. It presupposes too great fixity in the ballad style. 
The ballad is a lyric type exhibiting epic, dramatic, and 
choral elements; but within the type there is as great 
variation as within other lyric types. The ballad style is 
hardly more " essentially the same " than the song style 
in general, or the sonnet style, or the ode style. There 
is no single dependable stylistic test even for the English 
and Scottish traditional ballads; and there are wide dif- 
ferences between the ballads of divergent peoples, Scan- 
dinavian, German, Spanish, American. There are dif- 
ferences in the stanza form, in the presence and use of 
refrains, iteration, and choral repetition, in the preser- 
vation of archaic literary touches, in the method of nar- 
ration, and the like. The similarity in style of the pieces 
he included was the chief guide of Professor F. J. Child 

4 3 It may be pointed out that when a ballad is preserved in folk 
tradition dialogue sometimes gains prominence as the links in the 
narrative drop out. When only fragments of some ballad or song 
are remembered, these fragments are occasionally bits of dialogue. 
But such a tendency is not marked. In general it is what is most 
striking in the individual piece, a situation, event, tragic or comic 
crisis, striking turn of expression, sometimes the refrain only, for 
dance and game songs, that lingers in the memory, when the song 
as a whole has been lost. 

44 Walter Morris Hart, English Popular Ballads (1916), p. 46. 



" UNIFOKMITY " OF BALLAD STYLE 147 

in his selections for his collection of English and Scot- 
tish ballads ; yet he encountered such variety instead of 
essential uniformity that he was often in doubt what to 
include and what to omit, and fluctuated in his decisions. 
He made many changes of entry between his English and 
Scottish Ballads, published in 1858-1859, and his final 
collection published in ten parts, from 1882-1898. 'He 
would not have altered his decision concerning so many 
pieces had the test of style been so dependable as is usually 
assumed. 

Even the stanzaic structure of ballads is not uniform. 
Some of the older ballad texts are in couplet lines, while 
the later are usually in quatrains, and there are many 
variants of both forms. The ballad stanza is hardly more 
stable than the hymn stanza. And it varies not only in 
form but in movement, in the character of the expression, 
and in the lyrical quality. Sometimes the story is told 
in the third person, sometimes, as in Jamie Douglas, in 
the first person, as is the case in so many Danish ballads. 
The ballads were obviously composed to be recited, or to 
be sung to or by popular audiences; and, like hymns, 
they show brevity and simplicity of form. Otherwise 
there is wide fluctuation. Were the style " essentially 
the same" the differences in the quality of the ballads 
would lie only in their plots. Yet two texts of the same 
story often have a gulf between them. A staple example 
may be found in the narration of the same occurrence in 
the earlier and the later texts of The Hunting of the 
Cheviot. The earlier text contains the effective and often 
quoted stanza — 

For "Wetharryngton my harte was wo, 
that euer lie slayne shulde be; 



148 THE BALLAD STYLE 

For when both his leggis wear hewyne in to, 
yet he knylyd and fought on hys kny. 

The corresponding stanza in The Chevy Chase sounds like 
a travesty — 

For Witherington needs must I wayle 

as one in dolefull dumpes. 
For when his leggs were smitten of, 

he fought vpon his stump es. 

The same discrepancy may be noted between Percy's and 
Motherwell's texts of Edward. 

Many critics have commented upon the relative flatness 
of the style of the English traditional ballads compared 
to the Scottish. Professor Beers 45 thinks that the su- 
periority of the Northern balladry may have been due to 
the heavy settlement of Northmen in the border region. 
Danish literature is especially rich in ballads. It is per- 
haps due in part to Danish settlement in the North and 
to the large admixture in Northern blood and dialect that 
the North Countrie became par excellence the ballad land. 
English ballads, unlike the lowland Scotch, are often flat, 
garrulous, spiritless, didactic. Professor F. E. Bryant 46 
thought that the ballad of the Child type was not very 
current in Southern England, where the institution of 
the printed or stall ballad came to play so large a role 
and established a current type of another and less poetical 
pattern. The discrepancy in style between Northern and 
Southern ballads might then be ascribed to the dom- 
inance of stall balladry in London while it played no part 

45 A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, 
pp. 266, 267. 

46 A History of English Balla&ry (1913), p. 192. 



" UNIFOKMITY " OF BALLAD STYLE 149 

in the North. Mr. T. F. Henderson 47 places emphasis 
upon the superiority of Scotch lyric poetry in general in 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Its " makers " and 
hards were artists of special training and descent. Their 
influence is dominant for generations and their legacy may 
he seen in Scottish song of the eighteenth century. North- 
ern vernacular song, he points out, is more closely linked 
to the past than the popular minstrelsy of England. It 
represents more fully the national sentiments, associa- 
tions, and memories. It includes many numbers that 
bear the hall-mark of an ancient and noble descent. 

The relation is close of the Northern ballad style to 
that of fifteenth century Scottish poetry and to Scot- 
tish popular song as it emerges in the eighteenth century. 
To cite illustration, Henry son's Robyne and Mahyne and 
The Bludy Sarh are astonishingly ballad-like in stanzaic 
form and in expression, though they were not composed 
for oral currency and the themes are not heroic or border 
themes. The Bludy Sarh opens as follows : — 

This hundir yeir I hard be tald 

Thair -was a worthy king; 
Dukes, erlis, and barounis bald 

He had at his bidding. 

This lord was anceanne and aid, 

And sexty yearis couth ring; 
He had a doehter fair to f aid, 

A lusty lady ying. 

The ballad mannerism of forced accent is noticeable, and 
in Robyne and Mahyne especially striking use is made of 
dialogue. If these pieces had been composed for recita- 

47 Scottish Vernacular Literature (1898), p. 385. 



150 THE BALLAD STYLE 

tion or singing, if they had had oral currency for some 
generations with consequent transformations, assimila- 
tions, and re-creation, both might possibly seem the most 
orthodox of traditional ballads. 

To return to the subject of variation of style within 
the Child ballads, the precariousness of style as a test of 
what is properly a ballad and what is not is shown by 
The Nut Brown Maid. It resembles some of the tradi- 
tional ballads so closely in style as to win for itself for a 
long time treatment as one of the latter. It was included, 
for example, in the first ballad collection published by 
Professor Child. But it has now very properly lost such 
classification since it is really a debate piece, a bit of 
special pleading, not a lyric tale. 

There are some who classify the American cowboy 
songs as " American ballads." 48 It need hardly be said 
that their style is utterly different from that of the Child 
pieces. Conventional epithets, wrenched accent, struc- 
tural repetition in narration, use of the " legacy " motive, 
etc., are all missing save where the songs are made over 
from Old World ballads. Most, however, are songs rather 
than ballads, and their chief collector has so termed 
them. 49 

If by the statement that ballads show uniformity of 
style is meant that all ballads are likely to show a certain 
structural mannerism, i. e., structural or lyrical repeti- 
tion, so-called " incremental repetition," it should be 
pointed out that this is not. a differentia of the ballad style, 
or proof of some special mode of genesis for ballads, for it 
is a characteristic of popular song in general. Parallel- 

48 G. H. Stempel, A Book of Ballads (1917), p. 145. 

49 J. A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs (1910). 



" UNIFORMITY " OE BALLAD STYLE 151 

ism of line structure and incremental repetition are found 
in mediaeval songs, both religious and secul'ar, and in folk- 
songs of many types : carols, student songs, nursery songs 
and lullabies, revival hymns, etc., as well as (in a distinc- 
tive way which is not the ballad way) in game and dance 
songs. Lyrical repetition in presenting narrative is 
found only in ballads, for the ballad is the only narrative 
type of folk-song; but ballads can be ballads which do not 
show it. Its frequent presence in English ballads is a 
characteristic which they share with other types of folk- 
song. It is not an essential characteristic of their struc- 
ture, and it is more abundant in later than in earlier texts. 
There are many varieties of it ; and primarily it is some- 
thing to be associated not merely with the traditional bal- 
lad style but with the style of folk-song in general. 

Comparison shows many points of difference as well as 
of resemblance in the styles of Danish, Russian, Spanish, 
Scandinavian, English and Scottish, and American bal- 
lads. What they have in common are the features on 
which we rest the definition of folk ballads as a lyric type. 
They are story pieces, they are singable or are easily re- 
cited, and their authors and origins have been lost to view. 
The real truth of the matter may be stated as follows. 
There is no universal ballad style essentially the " same " 
apart from locality or chronology, even when we limit our 
consideration to traditional folk-ballads. Within one 
community, however, through a certain duration, there is 
likely to be uniformity of style in the ballads preserved in 
folk-tradition. Popular preservation has a levelling effect 
on pieces which have commended themselves to the folk- 
consciousness and have been handed down in tradition. 
Pieces of all types and origins are made over to conform 



152 THE BALLAD STYLE 

to the horizons of the singers. A negro song may even 
take on characteristics of the English and Scottish ballads 
when recovered from white singers in regions where Old 
World ballads play an important role in the folk reper- 
tory. 50 Examination of a body of folk-songs may reveal 
wide divergence of provenance and, originally, of style* 
Yet, as in the cowboy pieces, the appearance of homo- 
geneity may soon be assumed.. They seem to be the pro- 
duct of, and to mirror the life of, those from whom they 
were recovered. Pieces of all types are assimilated in 
folk-song; in the course of time they come to borrow ele- 
ments from one another; mannerisms which are easily 
caught spread; until similarity of style is approximated. 
The ballad stanza, like the hymn stanza, has certain limi- 
tations conditioned by the powers of the singers, or by 
the vocal and psychological limitations of popular song in 
general. Yet in the long run styles change for folk 
poetry as they do for book poetry. British popular song 
of the nineteenth century is not like that of the seven- 
teenth, nor is that of the seventeenth like that of the 
fifteenth. American sentimental, comic, and patriotic 
popular songs of the twentieth century are of other patterns 
from those current in the nineteenth. The song modes 
of John Brown, Marching through Georgia, Old Dan 
Tucker, Zip Coon, Lorena, have given way to those of 
Tipperary, Keep the Home Fires Burning, The Long 
Long Trail, Over There. These are songs not ballads, and 
some of them are of British origin ; but the same general- 

50 Compare John Hardy ( Campbell and Sharp, Folk-Song of the 
Southern Appalachians, No. 87), in which, as in several other songs 
in the repertory of the singers contributing, a passage has been as- 
similated from the Old- World ballad, The Lass of Boch Royal. 



IMPKOVISATION AND FOLK-SONG 153 

ization is true for the style of our contemporary story- 
songs or ballads. The uniformity of the ballad style is a 
uniformity for one people, or one class of people, during 
one or more generations ; otherwise there is only the uni- 
formity of simplicity to be expected of popular song of all 
types. 

IV IMPROVISATION AND FOLK-SONG 

It seems clear that it is time to instil caution into our 
association of the primitive festal throng improvising and 
collaborating, and hypothetical throngs of peasants or vil- 
lagers collaborating in the creation of the English and 
Scottish popular ballads. Primitive song and the medi- 
aeval ballads are separate phenomena, with a tremendous 
gulf in time and civilization between. No doubt some 
of the choral improvisations of savage peoples found or 
find permanence', as is the case with individual improvisa- 
tions, and also with songs thought out in solitude — 
or " dreamed " in the Indian way. But such songs — 
consisting of a few words, or a few lines monotonously re- 
peated — are quite a different thing from improvisations 
of length, having a definite narrative element, and high 
artistic value as poetry. Most primitive improvisations 
are no tax on the memory, and hardly, in view of their 
brevity, on the creative power. 51 A singer with a good 

si In the field of primitive ritual song there are many feats of 
memory that are quite wonderful. Long years are required for an 
Indian to become a really adept renderer of tribal rituals. See, 
for examples of verbal length, in the 27th Report of the Bureau of 
American Ethnology, the ritual song of 39 lines on p. 42, or that 
of 50 lines on pp. 571-572, at the bottom very nobly poetic. Sim- 
ilar examples are to be found in other tribes. Also there is some- 
thing remotely analogous to ballad structure in such ritual songs as 



154 THE BALLAD STYLE 

voice and a turn for melody might succeed, whether he 
could compose words very well or not. 

When it is affirmed that improvising folk-throngs cre^ 
ated the literary type appearing in the English and Scot- 
tish ballads of the Child collection, pieces like The Hunt- 
ing of the Cheviot, the Kobin Hood pieces, Sir Patrick 
Spens, Lord Randal, etc., the affirmation is pure — and 
not too plausible — conjecture. We have to do with long 
finished narratives, obeying regular stanzaic structure, 
provided with rhyme, and telling a whole story — pretty 
completely in older versions, more reducedly in the later. 
To assume that ignorant uneducated people composed 
these, or their archetypes, having the power to do so just 
because they were ignorant and uneducated, finds no sup- 
port in the probabilities. There is strong doubt that a 
" choral throng, with improvising singers, is not the 
chance refuge, but rather the certain origin, of the bal- 
lad as a poetic form." There is still stronger doubt of the 
" acknowledged aptitude of the older peasant for impro- 
visation and spontaneous narrative song," or of a state- 
ment like this : " There can be no question, then, of the 
facts. Popular improvisation at the dance has been the 
source of certain traditional lyric narratives." 52 The 
following position is somewhat qualified from the preced- 
ing but it, too, represents conjecture rather than what is 
demonstrable : " The characteristic method of ballad 
authorship is improvisation in the presence of a sympa- 
thetic company which may even, at times, participate in 

are given on pp. 206-242 of The Hako. But these ritual songs are 
not improvisations ; nor are they of " communal " rendering. 

52 Gummere, Cambridge History of English Literature, u, p. 456; 
Old English Ballads, p. 312; The Popular Ballad, p. 25. 



IMPKOVISATION AND FOLK-SONG 155 

the process. Such a description is in general warranted 
by the evidence though it cannot be proved for any of 
the English and Scottish popular ballads." 53 The author 
" belonged to the folk, derived his material from popular 
sources, made his ballad under the inherited influence of 
the manner described, and gave it to the folk as soon as 
he had made it." 

We should remind ourselves that m our aay attempts 
to solve the problems of literary history proceed from the 
concrete to the theoretical. The methods of the transcen- 
dentalist yield to those of the scientist, who first gathers 
then scrutinizes his data. Certainly this is a better 
method than that which generalizes from an " inner 
light," looking about for whatever evidence may be found 
by way of support. A wise thing to do before reaching 

5 3 Kittredge, Introduction to English and Scottish Ballads, p. xvii. 

This view associating the origin of the English and Scottish 
ballads with the gathered folk-throng and improvisation has many 
adherents. It is the view to be found in our best known and most 
accessible books treating the ballads, like Professor Gummere's The 
Beginnings of Poetry, The Popular Ballad, and Democracy and 
Poetry, and it appears in the Cambridge History of English Litera- 
ture and in the Kittredge and Sargent one-volume edition of the 
Child ballads, and it seems to have been accepted by F. E. Bryant, 
A History of English Balladry, 1913. Besides the many authors 
holding it who have been mentioned in preceding pages, it has the 
support of Professor G. M. Miller, Dramatic Elements in the Popu- 
lar Ballads, University of Cincinnati Studies in English (1905), 
and apparently of Professor C. Alphonso Smith, Ballads Surviving in 
the United States, The Musical Quarterly, n, 116. There are dis- 
senters from it here and there, whose work may be found in special ' 
articles. Among them was W. W. Newell, the distinguished folk- 
lorist (see Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 13, p. 113). But 
the theory of communal origin and emergence, with its emphasis on 
improvisation, retains the strategic position in literary histories 
and in special school editions of the ballads. 



156 THE BALLAD STYLE 

conclusions concerning the processes of the past, is to make 
sure what is true of the present; to look for parallel con- 
temporary material and to keep it in mind when examin- 
ing the older. If the past often casts light upon the pres- 
ent, the present, in its turn, may often cast light upon the 
past. 

Surely then it is advisable, in handling problems of 
origin, to keep an eye upon the diffusion and establish- 
ment of types, in the folk-song of our own time, holding 
in mind changes and parallels in conditions, especially as 
compared with those surrounding the folk ballads of older 
times. Yet this has not been a customary angle of ap- 
proach in discussions of the English and Scottish popular 
ballads. When considering a lyric type that arose in Eng- 
land in the later- middle ages, critics should give it not less 
but rather greater weight than argument from the anthro- 
pological beginnings of poetry, which of late years has 
monopolized the foreground of discussion. The subjects, 
the authorship and composition of primitive song, and 
the authorship and composition of the English and Scot- 
tish popular ballads are distinct ; and, for both, the affirma- 
tion of characteristic origin by communal improvisation 
should no longer be made. 

Of late years a considerable number of pieces composed 
by groups of unlearned people whose community life so- 
cialized their thinking have been made available to stu- 
dents of folk song, namely American cowboy and lumber- 
man songs, and negro spirituals. It is hardly likely that 
human ability has fallen greatly since the middle ages; 
yet when we see what is the best that communal compo- 
sition- can achieve now, and are asked to believe what it 
created some centuries ago, the discrepancy becomes un- 



IMPKOVISATION AND FOLK-SONG 157 

believable. The American pieces which, according to 
their collectors, have been communally composed, or at 
least emerged from the ignorant and unlettered in isolated 
regions, afford ample testimony in style, structure, qual- 
ity, and technique to the fact that the English and Scot- 
tish popular ballads could not have been so composed, nor 
their type so established. In general, real commurialis- 
tic or popular poetry, as we can place the finger on it, 
composed in the collaborating manner emphasized by 
Professor Gummere and Professor Kittredge, is crude, 
structureless, incoherent, and lacking in striking and mem- 
orable qualities. 54 Popular improvisations are too lack- 
ing in cohesion and in effective qualities, to retain identity 
or to achieve vitality unless in stray instances, scattered 
in time and place ; they are too characterless to be capable 
of developing into a literary type like the English and 
Scottish ballads. There are now many collections of 
American folk-song, made in many States. In these col- 
lections, the pieces of memorable quality are exactly those 
for which folk-composition can not be claimed. The few 
rough improvisations which we can identify as emerging 
from the folk themselves — which we actually know to 
be the work of unlettered individuals or throngs — are 
those farthest from the Child ballads in their general 

s* For material in support of these generalizations, see the discus- 
sion of Balladry in America, especially the section entitled " The 
Southwestern Cowboy Songs and the English and Scottish Ballads." 
Compare further the improvisations of our own fast-dying-out ring 
games and play party songs (for references see pp. 61, 64), and of 
children's songs. For the Old World compare the improvisations 
of Faroe Island fishermen, of Russian cigarette girls, of the South 
German SchnadaMpfln, Bohme Geschichte des Tanzes, p. 239, and 
of labor songs, Biicher, Arbeit und Rhythmus, pp. 304, 327, etc. 



158 THE BALLAD STYLE 

characteristics and in their worth as poetry. 55 . ISTor is 
there a single instance of such an improvisation develop- 
ing into a good piece, or becoming, as time goes on, any- 
thing like a Child ballad, unless by direct assimilation of 
passages from one of the latter. Yet they emerged from 
throngs no less homogeneous, perhaps more homogeneous 
than the mediaeval peasants and villagers. 

The most homogeneous groups in the world are doubt- 
less the military groups ; yet war and march songs are al- 
ways appropriated, never composed by the soldiers. The 
examples afforded by the war for the Union are still famil- 
iar ; the favorite song developed by the Cuban war 56 was 
adapted from a French-Creole song; and we know the 
origin of the songs popular among the soldiers in the 
European war. If the " homogeneity " theory has any 
value, it ought to find illustrations in army life. And do 
prisoners in stripes and lock step ever invent songs? 
Granting the " communal conditions " theory, our peni- 
tentiaries should be veritable fountains of song and bal- 
ladry. As a matter of fact, the most famous of prison 
ballads is the masterpiece of an accomplished poet, — 
Wilde's " Ballad of Beading Gaol." 

Another thing shown by modern collections of folk- 
song is that the songs preserved among the folk are nearly 
certain not to be those composed by them. Those they 
make themselves are just about the first to die. 57 Usu- 

55 It is obvious that negro songs do not tend to assume a narrative 
type but retrograde to a simple repetition of phrases. 

56 Joseph T. Miles, "A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight." 
" Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here," popular before and during the 
European war, utilizes for its melody the Pirates Chorus, from Sir 
Arthur Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, 

57 Illustration may be drawn also from the improvisations at the 



IMPKOVISATIOlSr AND FOLK-SONG 159 

ally some special impetus, some cause for persistence or 
popularity, is to be detected for the pieces that live. And 
the striking or memorable qualities, or the special mode of 
diffusion, necessary to bring vitality are just what the 
genuine " communal " folk-pieces do not and cannot have. 
Most improvised poetry dies with the occasion that brought 
it forth. This is by and large a dependable generaliza- 
tion. What the folk improvises is typically flat and in- 
ferior and has no such vitality as the material assimilated 
and preserved by the folk from other sources. 

The test of subject-matter should also be taken into ac- 
count, when we are considering the likelihood that some 
process akin to the processes of primitive choral song and 
dance — continued through untold centuries among vil- 
lagers and peasants — produced the Child ballads. The 
real communal pieces, as we can identify them, deal with 
the life and the interests of the people who compose them. 
They do not occupy themselves with the stories and the 
lives of the class above them. The cowboy pieces deal 
with cattle trails, barrooms, broncho riding, not with the 
lives of ranch-owners and employers; and a negro piece 
deals with the boll weevil, not with the adventures of the 
owners of plantations. Songs well-attested as emerg- 
ing from the laboring folk throngs of the Old-World deal 

old time revival meetings, where " a good leader could keep a song 
going among a congregation or a happy group of vocalists, impro- 
vising a new start line after every stop until his memory or in- 
vention gave out." See The Story of Hymns and Tunes, by Theron 
Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth (1896), chapter vii ("Old Revival 
Hymns"), pp. 262-297. But these improvisations did not live or 
produce new hymns. The material of the revival hymns and the 
mannerisms of the singing, especially of improvisation and pro- 
traction, had strong influence on negro folk-song, indeed afforded the 
background for the negro " spirituals." See pp. 129-132. 



160 THE BALLAD STYLE 

with the interests of factory life or agricultural life, or 
with the adventures of those of the social class singing or 
composing the songs. The improvisations of folk singers 
are usually personal, satirical, humorous, or vituperations, 
are lampoons and the like, and they grow out of the imme- 
diate interests or level of life or the latest occurrence 
among the singers. They are not often sentimental and 
are not heroic, narrative, or historical. What then must 
we think of the English and Scottish ballads, if the people 
composed them ? Their themes are not at all of the char- 
acter to be expected. They are not invariably on the 
work, or on episodes in the life of the ignorant and lowly. 
Would, they have had so great vitality or have won such 
currency if they had dealt with laborers, ploughmen, 
spinners, peasants, common soldiers, rather than with 
aristocrats ? The typical figures in the ballads are kings 
and princesses, knights and ladies, — King Estmere, 
Young Beichan, Young Hunting, Lord Randal, Earl 
Brand, Edward, Sir Patrick Spens, Edom o' Gordon, Lord 
Thomas and Fair Annet, Lady Maisry, Proud Lady Mar- 
garet, or leaders like the Percy and the Douglas. We 
learn next to nothing concerning the humbler classes from 
them ; less than from Eroissart's Chronicles, far less than 
from Chaucer. The life is not that of the hut or the 
village, but that of the bower and the hall. Nor is the 
language parallel to that of the cowboy and negro pieces. 
It has touches of professionalism, stock poetic formulae, 
alliteration, often metrical sophistication. It is not 
rough, flat, crude, in the earlier and undegenerated ver- 
sions; instead there is much that is poetic, telling, beau- 
tiful. It is for its time much nearer the poetry coming 
from professional hands than might be expected from me- 



IMPKOVISATION AND FOLK-SONG 161 

diseval counterparts of The Old Chisholm Trail and The 
Boll Weevil. 58 ISTo doubt there existed analogues of these 
pieces, i .e., songs which were sung by and were the crea- 
tion of ignorant and unlettered villagers; but we may be 
certain that these mediaeval analogues were not the Child 
ballads. 

The English and Scottish ballads should no longer be 
inevitably related to primitive singing and dancing 
throngs, improvising and collaborating. We can not look 
upon creations of such length, structure, coherence, finish, 
artistic value, adequacy of expression, as emerging from 
the communal improvisation of simple uneducated folk- 
throngs. This view might serve so long as we had no 
clear evidence before us as to the kind of thing that the 
improvising folk-muse is able to create. When we see 
what is the best the latter can do, under no less favorable 
conditions, at the present time, we remain skeptical as to 
the power of the mediseval rustics and villagers. The 
mere fact that the mediseval throngs are supposed by 
many scholars to have danced while they sung, whereas 
modern cowboys, lumbermen, ranchmen, or negroes do not, 
should not have endowed the mediseval muse with such 
striking superiority of product. 

ss See Chapter vi, iii. 



CHAPTER V 

THE ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHUKCH 

Many origins have been suggested for the type of nar- 
rative song appearing in the English and Scottish tradi- 
tional ballads: minstrel genesis, origin in the dance, im- 
provisations of mediaeval peasant communes, or descent 
from the dance songs of primitive peoples. The hypothe- 
sis of minstrel origin was that first to be advanced and it 
has always retained supporters. There remains a possi- 
bility not yet brought forward which deserves to be pre- 
sented for what it is worth, since the problem, though it 
may be insoluble, has its attraction for critic and student. 
We have but meager knowledge of the ballad melodies of 
pre-Elizabethan days, and we can get but little farther 
with the study of the ballads by way of research into 
mediaeval music. Moreover the earliest texts remaining 
to us seem to have been meant for recital rather than for 
singing. In general, the melodies of ballads are more 
shifting, less dependable, than are the texts, in the sense 
of the plots and the characters which the texts present. 
This is true of contemporary folk-songs and it was proba- 
bly true earlier. One text may be sung to a variety of airs 
or one air may serve for many texts. Nor can we get 
much farther with the study of ballads by way of the 
minstrels. They have had much attention already; and 
nothing has ever been brought out really barring them 

162 



THE EAELIEST BALLAD TEXTS 163 

from major responsibility for ballad creation and diffusion 
in the earlier periods. Again, we can get but little farther 
by studying the mediaeval dance, or folk-improvisations, or 
the dance songs of primitive peoples, all of which have 
been associated with the Child ballads to an exaggerated 
degree. It is time to try a new angle of approach y— the 
last remaining — although the hypothesis which it sug- 
gests is far removed from the theory of genesis enjoying 
the greatest acceptance at the present time, and although 
it — like its predecessors — may not take us very far. 

It has been customary among theorizers completely to 
discard the chronological order of the ballad texts remain- 
ing to us, and to argue toward origin and development 
from a type of ballad like Lord Randal and Edward, of 
comparatively late appearance, when such reversal of 
chronology best suited the theory to be advanced. The 
contrary procedure, theorizing from the facts of chronol- 
ogy, is the logical one. If the ballad texts which are oldest 
are given attention and emphasis, actual fact adhered to 
and conjecture omitted, can anything distinctive be 
reached ? This method of approach is one to which the 
ballads have never been subjected in more than a cursory 
way. If it is tried, in what direction does it lead? 



I THE EARLIEST BAEEAD TEXTS 

If we accept the body of English and Scottish ballad 
material as defined by Professor F. J. Child, the oldest 
ballad texts existing have to do rather strikingly with 
the church. They have unmistakably an ecclesiastical 
stamp, and sound like an attempt to popularize Biblical 
history or legend. By our oldest texts are meant those 



164 ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHUKCH 

to be found in early manuscripts of established date, not 
texts recovered from an oral source or found in manu- 
scripts of later centuries. 1 The earliest remaining Eng- 
lish ballad is conceded to be the Judas, a narrative of 36 
lines in rhyming couplets, which endows him with a wicked 
sister, refers to his betrayal of Christ for thirty pieces of 
silver, and reflects some of the curiosities of mediaeval 
legend concerning him. 2 The manuscript preserving it, 
in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, is certainly 
of the thirteenth century. The same manuscript contains 
A Ballad of the Twelfth Day, a ballad of the same general 
nature as the Judas and written in the same hand. 3 It 
has probably escaped general recognition as a ballad be- 
cause composed in monorhyme quatrains, a more elaborate 
form, instead of in the couplets of the Judas. 

From the fifteenth century comes Inter Diabolus et 
Virgo, ancestor of many riddling ballads, preserved in the 
Bodleian library at Oxford, a piece in which the devil is 
worsted by a clever and devout maiden. The questions 
and answers reach their climax in " God's flesh is better 
than bread " and " Jesus is richer than the King." Like- 
wise from the fifteenth century is St. Stephen and Herod, 
in the Sloane manuscript of about the middle of the' cen- 
tury, which incorporates the widespread mediaeval legend 
of the cock crowing from the dish Cristus natus est, a leg- 

i For the dating of ballad texts, see E. Fliigel, Zur Chronologie 
der englischen Balladen, Anglia, vol. xxi, (1899), pp. 312 ff. 

2 Compare P. F. Baum, " The English Ballad of Judas Iscariot," 
Publications of the Modem Language Association of America, vol. 
xxxi (1916), p. 181, and "The Mediaeval Legend of Judas Iscariot," 
ibid., p. 481. 

s Printed, with editorial notes, by W. W. Greg, The Modem Lan- 
guage Review, vol 1 , vin, p. 64, and vol. ix (1913), p. 235. 



THE EARLIEST BALLAD TEXTS 165 

end which appears also in the well-known carol or re- 
ligious ballad, The Carnal and the Crane. Als I yod on ay 
Mounday, in 8-line stanzas, preserved in a fourteenth- 
century manuscript in the Cotton collection, is hardly a 
ballad, but a poem to which the later ballad, The Wee Wee 
Man, may be related. It is not admitted among ballads 
by Professor Child. Thomas Rymer is generally ac- 
counted old, since its hero is Thomas of Erceldoune; we 
do not have it, however, in early form, but from the eight- 
eenth century, and there is no determining the time of its 
composition. There is a fifteenth-century poem, in bal- 
lad stanza, Thomas of Erseldoune, preserved in the Thorn- 
ton manuscript, but it is usually classified as a romance or 
a romantic poem, never as a ballad. The existing ballad, 
on the same theme, is probably not a legacy from the 
romance but an independent creation telling the same 
story. Possibly it is based on the romance. Among 
earlier texts are left, then, only a few greenwood and 
outlaw pieces from no farther back than the middle of the 
fifteenth century. The first is Robin and Gandeleyn, a 
greenwood ballad from about 1450, which opens in the 
reporter's manner of so many of the chansons d'aventure: 

I herde the carpynge of a clerk 
Al at yone wodes ende. 

Others are Robin Hood and the Monk (which has a rev- 
erdi opening), Robin Hood and the Potter of about 1500, 
and A Gest of Robin Hood of perhaps a few years later. 
There were earlier songs and rhymes, just as there were 
later songs and rhymes of Robin Hood, 4 but whether he 
was celebrated in the ballad manner prior to the fifteenth 
4 Like the " rhymes " of Robin Hood mentioned in Piers Plowman, 



166 ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHUECH 

century we do not know. 5 The ecclesiastical pieces are in 
the couplet form usually recognized by scholars as the 
older for ballads, while Robin and Gandelyn and the Kobin 
Hood pieces are in the familiar four-line stanza which be- 
came the staple ballad stanza. We should, very likely, go 
somewhat earlier than the thirteenth-century Judas for the 
genesis of the lyric type which it represents ; but there is 
no doubt that, in respect to chronological appearance, our 
oldest ballads deal not with themes of love, romance, do- 
mestic tragedy, adventure, chronicle, or even outlawry — 
though the latter come as early as the fifteenth century — 
but instead are strikingly ecclesiastical. 

It need hardly be pointed out that this scrutiny is a 
logical one to make, though it would be idle to think its 
results decisive. It seems to suggest that the ballad as a 
poetic type, a story given in simple lyrical or singable 
form, may have received impetus from, or have been 
evolved through the desire to popularize a. scriptural story 
or legend. In other words, it is- as. though the ballad, like 
the religious carols and the miracle plays and a great mass 
of ecclesiastical lyrics and narrative poetry, might be a 

s The music of some of the Kobin Hood songs, sometimes at least, 
seems to have been church music, or music of the same type. See a 
passage on " pryksong '"' in the Interlude of The Four Elements, 
dated by Schelling about 1517. (Halliwell edition, Percy Society 
Publications, 1848, pp. 50, 51.) See also pricksong in The Oxford 
Dictionary. There should be nothing surprising in the singing of 
ballads to music of ecclesiastical type, if such was the case. In con- 
temporary folk-song, hymn tunes are constantly utilized, in the 
United States and elsewhere — as in the Faroe Islands, according to 
Thuren. The words of John Brown, in the period of the Civil War, 
. were put together to a popular Methodist camp-meeting tune. Jean 
Beck {La Musique des Troubadours, Paris, 1910, pp. 19-24) leans to 
the opinion that the source of troubadour music, hence of Romance 
lyric poetry in general, is to be found in the music of the church. 



THE EARLIEST BALLAD TEXTS 167 

part of that great mediaeval movement to popularize for 
edifying reasons biblical characters and tales, a movement 
having its first impulse in the festival occasions of the 
church. Then, again like the drama, it passes from ec- 
clesiastical hands, with edification the purpose, into secu- 
lar hands, with the underlying purpose of entertainment. 
To follow farther the possibilities, once the type was popu- 
larized and mainly in the hands of the minstrels, as the 
drama passed into the control of the guilds, a variety of 
material was assimilated, and (still like the drama) the 
religious material, having historically initial place, be- 
came submerged and ultimately well-nigh lost to view. 
The minstrels of great houses sang of the martial deeds 
of those houses, as of the Percys, the Stanleys, the How- 
ards. 6 Popular outlaws were celebrated, though in a 
somewhat upper-class way, in the Robin Hood pieces, in 
the period when outlaws were popular figures in litera- 
ture; while for the entertainment of aristocratic mixed 
audiences, for which so many of the literary types of the 
Middle Ages were developed, all kinds of material, ro- 
mantic and legendary and the like, were utilized. In its 
period of full development, the ballad shades off into 
many types, the epic chanson in Robin Hood, the allegory 
in The Rose of England, the verse chronicle in The Battle 
of Otterbourne, the romance in Sir Aldingar and Earl 
Brand, the aube in The Gray Cock, the lament in Johnny 
Campbell, the carol in The Cherry Tree Carol, and theo- 
logical discussion in verse in The Carnal and the Crane. 7 

6 In The Hunting of the Cheviot; the Rose of England and Flod- 
den Field; Sir Andrew Barton. 

i Other " literary " features of the ballads, the popular spring 
morning {reverdi) opening of the outlaw pieces and the frequent 



168 ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHUKCH 

The ecclesiastics and the minstrels, between them, were 
responsible for all or nearly all the new types of mediaeval 
poetry, and (possibly enough) for the ballads too. 8 An- 
other illustration of the passing of an ecclesiastical mode 
into secular hands, is the Mary worship of the church 
which was secularized in Provencal poetry and crossed to 
England in the woman worship of the chivalric code, le- 
flected in the romances and the romantic lyrics. 

It is certain that the earliest ballad texts do not sound 
as though they ever had any connection with the dance. 
Religious material sometimes appeared in mediaeval dance 

chanson d'aventure opening, were mentioned in connection with the 
discussion of fifteenth-century texts. 

s If ecclesiastical ballads are the earliest ballads, The Carnal and 
the Crane, a theological discussion between birds of the type liked in 
the Middle Ages, in which the Crane instructs her interrogator on 
the childhood and life of Jesus and in several apocryphal incidents, 
might be a ballad of earlier type than Lord Randal. Though itself 
first recorded in an eighteenth- century text, this ballad-carol has 
unmistakably early affiliations, as with St. Stephen and Herod, and 
early legendary matter concerning Christ. And the ballads Dives 
and Lazarus, traceable to the sixteenth century, The Maid and the 
Palmer of the Percy Manuscript, and Brown Robin's Confession of 
Buchan's collection, might represent an older type of material than 
Edward or Babylon. But this is purely speculative, and of no value 
as argument. 

The ballad, Hugh of Lincoln, or The Jew's Daughter, which still 
has vitality, though its earliest texts come from the middle of the 
eighteenth century, takes us back in its tragic story and its dis- 
covery of murder by miracle to the thirteenth century. The story 
of Hugh of Lincoln, first appears in The Annals of Waverley, 1255, 
and in Matthew of Paris. It has parallels in the twelfth century 
and a cognate in Chaucer's The Prior esse 's Tale. Hugh of Lincoln 
refers us to an old story of definite date more certainly than do 
most of the ballads. It deserves mention among those exhibiting, 
it would appear, material of older type than the outlaw, chronicle, 
or romantic ballads. 



THE EAKLIEST BALLAD TEXTS 169 

songs, but it was the rarest of the many types of material 
found in such songs. 9 There are traces of sporadic con- 
nection between the church and liturgical dancing in the 
Middle Ages, but established or widespread liturgical 
dancing is extremely doubtful. Testimonies are too abun- ' 
dant as to the stand taken by the mediaeval church against 
dancing, whether by professional dancers or by the folk. 

The application of the name " ballad," which means 
dance song, to the traditional lyric-epic did not come in a 
specific way until the eighteenth century; hence an ety- 
mological argument from the name, as indicating a dance 
origin for the species, should have no weight. A " bal- 
lad " in the fourteenth century was usually the artificial 
species which we now call the " ballade," a species which 
is to be associated with the dance. The name which we 
have fixed upon for them is perhaps responsible for our 
long association of the English and Scottish type with the 
dance, and for our refusal to look elsewhere for its genesis. 
In a manner exactly parallel, the word carol was applied 
late to religious songs of the Nativity and of Christmas 
(Erench noels). When the word carol first appeared in 
English it meant a secular dance song of spring and love. 
We name religious songs of Christmas by a word that first 
meant dance ' song, as we do our traditional lyric-epics. 
But for the definite suggestion of their name, it might 
seem less surprising that our earliest ballad texts associate 
themselves with biblical edification, not with dancing 
throngs on the village green. 

There are no earlier ballad documents in other coun- 
tries than in England, so that the chronology of the bal- 
lad's appearance is the only certain test that we have con- 

sBohme, Geschichte des Tanzes (1888), pp. 244 ff. 



170 ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHUKCH 

cerning the time of composition of a ballad text. The age 
of the story or theme of a ballad and the age of the ballad 
itself may be quite different matters. Besides, not all 
nations show a liking for ballads. The South African 
Dutch are said to have folk-tales, but no ballads. Italian 
folk-song, except in the extreme north, had no ballads, and 
Erench folk-song has no such wealth of ballad poetry as 
English has. Some parts of Spain have no ballads. The 
Danish ballads are those most closely related to the Eng- 
lish. The oldest Danish manuscript collection of ballads 
comes from about 1550, although there are fragments of 
ballads and references to ballads which take us back some- 
what earlier. One not very significant ballad, Ridderen i 
Hjorteham, is of about 1450. A systematic examination 
of Scandinavian ballads from the angle of approach of the 
role played by ecclesiastical material or by ecclesiastical 
agents of composition and diffusion, might have some 
bearing for or against the conjectures presented here; but 
probably it would yield little or nothing decisive. Also 
to be desired is an investigation of the religious narrative 
lyric for Old French popular verse, since the mediaeval 
English lyric owes so much to Erench sources. 

The terminus a quo for ballad origin must be the be- 
ginning of the twelfth century. Ballads of the rhyming 
form of the English and Scottish type cannot in origin 
antedate the Norman Conquest. If the Anglo-Saxons had 
ballads they were of the character of Old Teutonic verse, 
in some respects like the Brunanburh song, or the Battle 
of Maldon, or possibly like some of the Charms; in any 
case they were not in the rhyming form of the later bal- 
lads, the lyrical type which is under discussion here. The 
musical pliability of the lyric came from the south, across 



THE EARLIEST BALLAD TEXTS 171 

the Channel, modifying the stubbornness of the Old North- 
ern verse and its sameness of movement. Some old lore 
may have been handed on into the rhymed forms, old wine 
passing into new bottles, but the old song modes made 
way in general for the newer. Ballads of the rhyming 
Child pattern must have arisen, like modern poetry and 
prosody in general, after 1100. We have one ballad, 
Judas, and posssibly a second, A Ballad of Twelfth Day, 
from the thirteenth century ; and in general from 1200 on- 
ward much popular verse remains. It would help if more 
remained, but we need be at no loss as to what was in lyri- 
cal currency or what suited the popular taste. It will not 
do to assume that a type of ballad verse, the Child type, 
existed among the folk long before verse of its rhyming 
lyrical pattern, a new mediaeval type, makes its appearance 
in the lyric in general. The folk are more likely to have 
adhered to the old alliterative verse with its dual move- 
ment long after it had lost popularity in higher circles 
than they are to have invented new rhyming forms before 
these appear from professional hands. 

II SOME BALLAD AFFILIATIONS 

If ballad literature began with the religious ballads of 
the clericals, earlier ballads might be expected to show 
affinities with miracle plays and various types of scrip- 
tural and saints'-legend and other theological matter in 
verse and with religious lyrics. This they do show; and 
the resemblances are far stronger than they are to secular 
matter coming from the same early periods. Many of 
our existing Child ballads are on the border line between 
ballads and carols (French noels), like The Bitter Withy, 



112 ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHUKCH 

The Holy Well, The Cherry-Tree -Carol, The Carnal and 
the Crane, so that they appear in illustrative collections 
of both types of verse. They are easily accessible in col- 
lections of both ballads and carols, are included in the 
Child collection, and they need not be reproduced here. 
They deserve either classification and make clear that the 
ballad and the religious carol may be related lornn. 
There is also obvious relationship to the miracle plays and 
their cognates. The opening and the end of the thir- 
teenth-century Harrowing of Hell 10 exhibit ballad-like 
stanzas : — 

Alle herkneth to me nou ? 

A strif wolle y tellen ou 

of ihesu ant of sathan, 

tho ihesu wes to helle ygan . . . 

in godhed tok he -then way 
that to helle gates lay. 
The he com there tho seide he 
asse y shal nouthe telle the. 

The Brome Abraham and Isaac is often suggestive of the 
ballad manner. It is familiar, and space need not be 
given to quotation from it. The ballads also show affini- 
ties to scriptural and saints'-legend matter in verse of nar- 
rative type. 11 

10 Ed. all versions, W. H. Hulme, E. E. T. S., Extra Series, 100 
(1907). 

ii Compare in The Minor Pieces of the Vernon Manuscript, vol. I, 
ed. Horstmann, E. E. T. S., No. 98 (1892) The 'Miracles of Our 
Lady, p. 138, The Saving of Crotey City, The Child Slain by the 
Jews, A Jew Boy in an Oven, etc., the opening of The Visions of 
Seynt Poul wan he was rapt into Paradys, etc.; vol. ii, ed. Furni- 
vall (1901), Susannah, or Seemly Susan, p. 626; and in the Sloane 
Manuscript 2593, S't. Nicholas and Three Maidens and Nowel, Mary 
moder cum and se, etc. Also many pieces in' MS. Balliol 354. 



SOME BALLAD AFFILIATIONS 173 

Among the earlier minstrels, the dramatic instinct 
brought impersonation in which monologue and dialogue 
were given dramatically, by one individual, perhaps some- 
times in special costume. There are religious pieces like 
the thirteenth-century Harroiving of Hell, or like Judas 
(it may well be) or St. Stephen and Herod, which suggest 
that they were to be given dramatically. The dramatic 
element is strong in ballads and also in carols and in many 
religious poems intended to be given for instruction. 

Most striking, however, is the fact that in lyrical qual- 
ity and style 12 the closest affinities of the ballads of the 
pre-Elizabethan period seem to be with carols and with 
religious songs. It is in manuscripts containing religious 

The religious tag stanzas at the end of older ballads — often 
dropped in later texts — account for themselves better if emerging 
from ecclesiastical influence than if emerging from the purely sec- 
ular minstrelsy condemned for its influence by the church. Exam- 
ples are the endings of The Battle of Otterbourne or The Hunting 
of the Cheviot: 

Now let us all for the Perssy praye 

to Jhesu most of myght, 
To bryng hys sowlle to the blysse of heven 

for he was a gentyll knight. 
Or — 

Jhesue Crist our balys bete, 

and to the blys vs brynge. 
Thus was the hountyng of the Chivyat; 

God send vs alle good endyng. 

But this is uncertain ground. Such passages appear in the ro- 
mances, as Sir Orpheo, as well as in sermons, like the old Kentish , 
sermons of the thirteenth century. In the Danish ballads, Steen- 
strup thinks these tag stanzas a sign of lateness. 

12 The influence of the song of the early church has often been 
pointed out. " The lyric art, it is hardly too much to say/' declares 
Ehys, " was in English kept alive for nearly three centuries by the 
hymns of the monks and lay brothers" (Lyric Poetry {1913], p 19). 



1U ENGLISH BALLADS AKD THE CHIIKCH 

lyrical pieces that some of the oldest ballads and the near- 
est approaches to ballads are found. 13 Impose the lyrical 
quality of some types of carols upon a variety of narrative 
themes, or situation themes, and the type of ballad is 
reached which emerges in such abundance in the later six- 
teenth and earlier seventeenth centuries. The early 
Tudor period was one of great musical impulse, and the 
singing of ballads to melodies might then have won in 
favor over the older recital. Be this as it may, it is in the 
sixteenth century that the ballad texts which remain to 
us 14 first assume the lyrical refrains that both the religious 
and the older secular carols exhibited earlier. The Sloane 
manuscript of the middle of the fifteenth century is the 
richest in ballads or ballad-like pieces before the Percy 
manuscript, and it contains mainly religious and moral 
songs, three in Latin, nearly one hundred with Latin re- 
frains, and numerous Christmas carols. The earliest ap- 
proaches to the song manner of ballads which remain to 
us are ecclesiastical. 

There is- lyrical or structural repetition in the ballad 
manner in the' early fourteenth-century Song of the Incar- 
nation: — 15 

is The English religious lyric of the Middle Ages far exceeds in 
quantity that of secular verse and it appears much earlier. The 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries afford many specimens. That 
many were written in this period is clear from the number which 
yet remain to us. Before the thirteenth century, most religious 
lyrics were in Latin. 

14 With the possible exception of Robin and Gandeleyn. I have 
not been able to see the Harvard doctorate thesis of J. H. Boynton, 
Studies in the English Ba'llad Refrain, with a Collection of Ballad 
and Early Song Refrains (1897), for the thesis remained unpub- 
lished. 

is From the Sloane ms. 2593. And compare A Song of Joseph and 



SOME BALLAD AFFILIATIONS 175 

I syng of a mayden that is makeles; 
kyng of alle kynges to here sone che ches. 

he cam also stylle ther his moder was, 

as dew in aprylle that fallyt on the gras. 

he cam also stylle to his moderes bowr 
as dew in aprille that fallyt on the flour. 

he cam also stylle ther his moder lay, 

as dew in aprille that fallyt on the spray. 

moder & maydyn was neuer non but che; 
wel may swych a lady godes moder be. 

There is something of the lyrical quality of the ballads 
in — 16 

Adam lay y-boundyn, boundyn in a bond 

fowr thousand wynter thowt he not to long 

and all was for an appil, an appil that he took. . . . 

and in carols like " A new yer, a new yer, a chyld was i- 
born," and in many others. And surely there are close 
ballad affinities to be found in a song like this, written 
down in the reign of Henry VIII : — 17 

Mary in a manuscript of the Advocate's Library, Edinburgh, dated 
1372, first printed by Professor Carleton F. Brown, Selections from 
Old and Middle English (1918); also Lamentacio Dolorosa and 
Lullaby to the Infant Jesus, first printed (from the same manu- 
script) by Professor Brown. 

is Bernhard Fehr, Die Lieder der HS. Sloane 2593, Archiv, vol. 
cix, p. 51. Compare also some of the short religious pieces edited 
by Furnivall, E. E. T. S., vol. xv (1866), as Christ Comes, p. 259, 
from the Harleian MS. 7322. 

17 ms. Balliol 354. Richard Hill's Commonplace Book, E. E. 
T. S., Extra Series 101 (1907). This book contains many sacred 
songs and carols and many moral, didactic, and historical pieces and 



176 ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHUKCH 

Lully lulley 

The faucon hath borne my make away. 

He bare him up, he bare him down, 

He bare him into an orchard brown. Lully, etc. 

In that orchard there was an hall, 

Which was hanged with purpill and pall. Lully, etc. 

And in that hall there was a bed, 

It was hanged with gold so red. Lully, etc. 

And in that bed there lith a knight, 

His woundes bleding day and night. Lully, etc. 

By that bedside kneleth a may, 

And she wepeth both night and day. Lully, etc. 

And by that bed side there stondeth a stone, 
Corpus Christi wreten there on. Lully, etc. 

(Lully lulley, lully lulley 

The faucon hath borne my make away.) 

This song with a burden like a ballad, or like that of a 
Christmas carol, was interpreted by Professor Eliigel as 
the story of Christ's Passion, and his interpretation was 
borne out by a discovery of a modern traditional carol by 
F. Sidgwick. 18 The song is a religious song. The ten- 
dency in criticism has been to associate the ballads with 
older heroic poetry or with romance, or with dance songs ; 
but comparison will show that, in the texts earliest to ap- 

a few worldly and humorous pieces. It abounds in approaches to 
the ballad manner. 

is See Notes and Queries, 1905. Christ is referred to again and 
again as a " knight " in many religious songs from the Love Rune 
of Thomas de Hales onward. 



SOME BALLAD AFFILIATIONS 111 

pear, a closer connection in lyrical quality and in the use 
of refrains and repetition is afforded by the religious lyrics. 
The closest approaches which one finds to the ballad man- 
ner are the religious pieces like those in the Sloane and the 
Hill manuscripts. 

Lyrical narratives in couplet and quatrain form are ad- 
mitted as ballads. If the three-line carol stave — which 
dropped from use because a less suitable form for narra- 
tive verse 19 — were recognized also, such pieces as the fol- 
lowing narrative carol 20 might be termed ballads. Both 
the couplet and the carol stave had wide lyrical popularity 
earlier than the quatrain. 

Owt of the est a sterre shon bright 
For to shew thre kingis light, 
Which had ferre traveled day & nyght 
To seke that lord that all hath sent. 

Therof hard kyng Herode anon, 
That in kingis shuld cum thorow his regyon, 
To seke a child that pere had non, 
And after them sone he sent. 

Kyng Herode cried to them on hye: 
" Ye go to seke a child truly ; 
Go forth & cum agayn me by, 
& tell me wher that he is lent." 

Forth they went by the sterres leme, 
Till they com to mery Bethlehem; 
Ther they fond that swet barn-teme 
That sith for vs his blode hath spent. 

19 The iteration of triple rhyme brings monotony and checks the 
speed of the narrative. Just as with the ballad, so with the popular 
hymn stanza, the three-line form was replaced by the quatrain. 

20 ms. Balliol 354. Richard Hill's Commonplace Book. Ed. Dy- 
boski, E. E. T. S., Extra Series, 101 (1907), p. L 



178 ENGLISH BALLADS AKD THE CHUKCH 

Balthasar kneled first a down 
& said : " Hayll, Kyng, most of renown, 
And of all kyngis thou berist the crown, 
Therfor with gold I the present." 

Melchior kneled down in that stede 
& said : " Hayll, Lord, in thy pryest-hede. 
Receyve ensence to thy manhede, 
I brynge it with a good entent." 

Jasper kneled down in that stede 
& said : " Hayll, Lord, in thy knyghthede, 
I offer the myrre to thy godhede, 
For thou art he that all hath sent." 

Now lordis & ladys in riehe aray, 
Lyfte vp your hartis vpon this day, 
& ever to God lett vs pray, 
That on the rode was rent. 

The following from the Hill manuscript 21 is not in- 
cluded or mentioned by Professor Child, yet, if instead of 
being narrated in the first person like a few of the ballads 
it were narrated in the third, like most of them, and if it 
were in couplet or in the more usual quatrain form instead 
of in monorhyme quatrains, who would hesitate to classify 
it as a ballad ? It is clearly akin to the Judas which is so 
classified. 

" my harte is wo ! " Mary she sayd so, 

" For to se my dere son dye ; & sonnes haue I no mo." 

" Whan that my swete son was xxxti wynter old, 

Than the traytor Judas wexed very bold; 

For xxxti platis of money, his master he had sold; 

21 Ed. Dyboski, E. E. T. S., 101, p. 40. 



SOME BALLAD AFFILIATIONS 179 

But whan I it wyst, lord my hart was cold. 
0, my hart is wo ! " [Mary, she sayd so, 
" For to se my dere son dye; & sonnes haue I no mo."] 

" Vpon Shere Thursday than truly it was, 

On my sonnes deth that Judas did on passe; 

Many were the fals Jewes that folowed hym by trace, . 

& there, beffore them all, he kyssed my sonnes face. 
0, my hart [is wo ! " Mary, she sayd so, 
" For to se my dere son dye; & sonnes haue I no mo."] 

"My son, beffore Pilat browght was he; 

& Peter said in tymes he knew hym not perde. 

Pylat said vnto the Jewes: 'What say ye?' 

Than they cryed with on voys : ' Crucyf yge ! ' 
0, my hart is woo ! " [Mary, she sayd so, 
"For to se my dere son dye; & sonnes haue I no mo."] 

" On Good Friday at the mownt of Caluary 
My son was don on the crosse, naled with nalis in, 
Of all the frendis that he had, neuer on could he see, 
But jentyll the evangelist, that still stode hym by. 
0, my hart [is wo ! " Mary, she sayd so, 
" For to se my dere son dye; & sonnes haue I no mo."] 

" Thowgh I were sorowf ul, no man haue at yt wonder ; 

for howge was the erth-quak, horyble was the thonder; 

I loked on my swet son on the cross that stod vnder; 

Then cam Lungeus with a spere & clift his hart in sonder. 
0, my [hart is wo ! " Mary, she sayd so, 
"For to se my dere son dye; & sonnes haue I no mo."] 

Its relation to the Judas is seen when the two are read 
side bj side. The latter opens : — ■ 

Hit wes upon a Seerethorsday that vre louerd aros; 
Ful milde were the wordes he spec to Iudas. 



180 ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHUBCH 

"Iudas, thou most to Iurselem, oure mete for to bugge; 
Thritti platen of seluer thou bere up othi ruggi. . . ." 

It is a somewhat arbitrary distinction which admits the 
second piece as a ballad and denies to the more lyrical one 
snch classification. The pieces might well have emerged 
from the same types of authorship and audience. The 
thirteenth-century ballad of The Twelfth Day in the 
same Trinity College manuscript and in the same hand- 
writing as the Judas, but in more elaborate stanza form, 
has already been mentioned. It opens : — 

Wolle ye iheren of twelte day, wou the present was ibroust. 
In to betlem ther iesus lay, ther thre kinges him habbet isoust. 
a sterre wiset hem the wey, sue has neuer non iwroust, 
ne werede he nouther fou ne grey, the louerd that us alle hauet 
iwroust. 

It seems difficult to believe that such religious pieces as 
the Judas and the St. Stephen and Herod represent a type 
to be developed by the addition of narrative from the secu- 
lar carol or dance song, as suggested by Professor Ker. 22 
They owe much to religious songs. Perhaps if we note that 
refrains of both types, of secular dance songs and of 
religious songs, precede the appearance of refrains in the 
English and Scottish ballads (these appear mostly in the 
late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries) ; if we rec- 
ognize as most essential in the ballads a narrative element 
to be presented in the manner of the religious pieces ; and 
if we impose the somewhat arbitrary condition of couplet 
or quatrain form, barring the three-line carol stave, qua- 
train monorhyme, and related forms, we are on fairly safe 
ground. Certainly it seems quite unnecessary to retain 

22 English Literature; Mediceval (1912). Home University Lib- 
rary edition, p. 159, 



SOME BALLAD AFFILIATIONS 181 

the hypothesis of connection with dance-song origin, 
whether aristocratic, like the secular carols of Chaucer's 
time, or of the folk. Behind the earliest ballad texts 
which remain to us one finds no traces of affiliation with 
secular dance songs. 

The handling of the refrain is striking in the following 
piece, also from the Hill manuscript, which, except for its 
brevity and for our traditional rejection of narratives in 
carol-stave form, we should classify as a ballad. 23 

The Stoning of St. Stephen 

Whan seynt Stevyn was at Jeruzalem, 
Godis lawes he loved to lerne; 
That made the Jewes to cry so clere & clen, 
Lapidaverunt Stephanum, 

Nowe syng we both all & sum: 

Lapidauerunt Stephanum. 

The Jewes that were both false & fell, 
Against seynt Stephyn they were eruell, 
Hym to sle they made gret yell, 
& lapidaverunt Stephanum 
Nowe syng we, etc. 

They pullid hym with-owt the town, 
& than he mekely kneled down, 
While the Jewes crakkyd his crown, 
Quia lapidaverunt Stephanum, 
Nowe syng we, etc. 

Gret stones & bones at hym they caste, 
Veynes & bones of hym they braste, 
& they kylled hym at the laste, 

23 E. E. T. S., 101 (1907), p. 32. The Stoning of St. Stephen is 
not mentioned by Professor Child. Both the St. Stephen pieces are 
probably to be classed as St. Stephen day songs or carols. 



182 ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHUKCH 

Quia lapidauerunt Stephanum. 
Nowe syng we, etc. 

Pray we all that now be here, 
Vnto seynt Stephyn, that marter clere, 
To save vs all from the fendis fere. 
Lapidauerunt Stephanum. 
Nowe syng we, etc. 

It arrays itself alongside St. Stephen and Herod. The 
two lyrics, one adjudged to be a ballad, the other not to be 
one, are at least not so different in type as to make neces- 
sary the hypothesis of an utterly different mode of origin 
for the second. The Stoning of St. Stephen is the more 
lyrical of the two narratives and, unlike the earlier piece, 
it is provided with a refrain. 

The following affords yet another illustration of eccle- 
siastical, or semi-ecclesiastical, narrative song, from the 
period when Child ballads were not yet abundant. 24 

The Murder of Thomas a Beket 

Lystyn, lordyngis both gret & small, 
I will you tell a wonder tale, 
Howe holy chirch was browght in bale 
Cum magna iniuria. 

A, a, a, a! nunc gaudet ecclesia. 

The gretteste dark in this londe, 
Thomas of Canturbury, I vnderstonde, 
Slayn he was with wykyd honde, 
Malorum potencia. 

A, a, a, a! nunc gaudet ecclesia. 

24 Balliol ms, 354 E. E. T. S., 101, p. 31. The triple rhyme stanza 
of these ecclesiastical ballads appears also in Miracle plays, e. g., 
the Chester Noah's Flood. 



BALLADS AND CLEEICALS 183 

The knyghtis were sent from Harry the kynge, 
That day they dide a wykid thynge, 
Wykyd men, with-owt lesynge, 
Per regis imperia. 

A, a, a, a! nunc gaudet ecclesia. 

They sowght the bisshop all a-bowt, 
With-in his place, and with-out, 
Of Jhesu Crist they had no dowght 
Per sua malicia. 

A, a, a, a! nunc gaudet ecclesia. 

They opened ther mowthes wonderly wide, 
& spake to hym with myche pryde: 
" Traytor, here thoW shalt abide, 
Ferens mortis tedia." 

A, a, a, a! nunc gaudet ecclesia. 

Beffore the auter he kneled down, 
& than they pared his crown, 
& stered his braynes vp so down, 
Optans celi gawdia. 

A, a, a, a! nunc gaudet ecclesia. 

Recognition of song-narratives in carol stave, as well as 
of those in couplet and quatrain form, would admit this 
piece also among ballads. 

Ill BALLADS AKD CLERICALS 

Clericals are known to have composed and sung relig- 
ious lyrics; but an alternative hypothesis from that of 
direct ecclesiastical creation is that a lyric type success- 
fully developed by minstrels, namely the song-story — ex- 
isting alongside the songs of eulogy, of derision, the love 
songs, and other matter which they had in stock for en- 
tertainment — was adopted and made use of for its own 



184 ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHTTKCH 

ends by the church. There would be abundant parallels 
for such a taking over. Ritson 25 speaks of the utilization 
of popular airs by the Methodists of his day, much as they 
had been utilized earlier by the Puritans. The practice 
was not unknown to the evangelists Moody and Sankey and 
is not extinct among revivalists of the present time. 
Swner is icumen in of the thirteenth century perhaps owes 
its preservation to the religious words written below the 
secular ones in the manuscript which has come down to us, 
and there are other examples in old manuscripts of relig- 
ious adaptation of secular lyrics. To find illustration 
farther back, Ealdhelm is described by William of Malmes- 
bury 26 as sometimes standing in gleeman's garb on a 
bridge and inserting words of scriptural content into his 
lighter songs — an early example of the connection be- 
tween the church and songs for the common folk. After 
the Conquest, with the coming of a new type of song, the 
employment of the short recited tale or of the sung story 
for popularizing religious material might well have pro- 
duced pieces like the thirteenth-century Judas or the later 
St. Stephen and Herod or Inter Diabolus et Virgo. If the 
modes of the church were often utilized for secular poetry, 
the contrary tendency, the adoption of what was popular 
by the church, is also marked. The great days of the min- 
strels were the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, 
and the days of their break-up the fifteenth and the six- 
teenth centuries. Warton thought that " some of Our 
greater monasteries kept minstrels of their own in regular 

25 Dissertation on Ancient Songs and Music, prefixed to Ancient 
Songs and Ballads. Vol. I (ed. of 1829), p. lxxviii. 

26 De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum. Chronicles and Memorials of 
Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages. Published under 
the direction of the Master of the Rolls, 1858-99, p. 336. 



BALLADS AND CLEEICALS 185 

pay." 27 The class of minstrels indicated by Thomas de 
Cabham, a thirteenth-century archbishop of Canterbury, as 
to be tolerated while other classes deserved to be con- 
demned, was the class which sang the deeds of princes and 
the lives of saints. 28 When minstrels had ecclesiastical 
audiences, religious matter or national or heroic matter 
might come from them appropriately. A testimony re- 
mains concerning the songs of a minstrel Herbert before 
the prior of St. Swithin's when he entertained his bishop 
at Winchester in the fourteenth century (1338), and they 
were songs of Colbrand (Guy of Warwick) and of the de- 
liverance by miracle of Queen Emma. 29 From the fif- 
teenth century is a record of a song of the early Christian 
legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus given at an Epiph- 
any entertainment at Bicester in 1432. 30 These may 
not have been ballads, but they fall in the ballad period and 
their material is of the type, the deeds of princes and the 
lives of saints and martyrs, which was countenanced by de 
Cabham. 

A piece of first-hand evidence concerning the value of 
the harper and his harp to a discriminating prelate is re- 

27 There are many records of payments to minstrels extant in 
account books of Durham Priory, from the thirteenth century on- 
ward, and from Maxtoke and Thetford Priories from the fifteenth 
century. See. E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage. 

28 Penitential, printed by B. Haureau, 'Notices et Extraits de 
Manuscrits, xxiv, ii, 284, from Bib. Nat. Lat. 3218 and 3529. Sunt 
autem alii, qui dicuntur ioculatores, qui cantant gesta principum et' 
vitam sanctorum, et faciunt solatia hominibus vel in aegritudinibus 
suis vel in angustiis . . . et non faciunt etc. ... Si autem non 
faciunt talia, sed cantant in instrumentis suis gesta principum et 
alia talia utilia ut faciant solatia hominibus, sicut supradictum est, 
bene possunt sustineri tales, sicut ait Alexander papa. 

29 See Warton, History of English Poetry, ed. of 1840, pp. 81, 82. 
3oKennet, Parochial Antiquities (1695), ed. of 1818. 



186 ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCH 

lated by Robert Manning of Brunne in an account of Rob- 
ert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1253. 
Bishop Grosseteste wrote in English as well as Latin, trans- 
lating the allegorical Castel of Love into English for the 
sake of the ignorant. He recognized that the common peo- 
ple had to be reached in their own tongue. Robert Man- 
ning's testimony is as follows: 31 

Y shall yow telle, as y haue herd 

Of the bysshope Seynt Roberd; 

Hys toname ys Grostest 

Of Lynkolne, so seyth the gest. 

He loued moche to here the harpe, 

For mannys wytte hyt makyth sharpe; 

Next hys chaumbre, beside hys stody, 

Hys harpers chaumbre was fast thereby. 

Many tymes, be nyhtys and dayys, 

He had solace of notes and layys. 

One asked hym onys, resun why 

He hadde delyte yn mynstralsy: 

He answerede hym on thys manere, 

Why he helde the harper so dere, 

The vertu of the harpe, thurgk skylle & ryght 

Wyl destroye the fendes myght, 

And to the croys by gode skylle 

Ys the harpe lykened Weyle. . . . 

The harpe therof me ofte mones; 

Of the ioye and of the blys 

Where God hymself wonys and ys. 

Thare-fore, gode men, ye shul lere, 

Whan ye any glemen here, 

To wurschep God at youre powere, 

As Dauyd seyth yn the sautere, 

Yn harpe, yn thabour, and symphan gle, 

Wurschepe God, yn troumpes and sautre, 

•i Eandlyng Synne, ed. F. J. Furnivall, E. E. T. S., 119. 



BALLADS AND CLEEICALS 187 

Yn cordes, an organes, and bellys ryngyng, 
Yn al these, wurschepe ye heuene kyng. 
Yf ye do thus, y sey hardly, 
Ye mow here youre mynstralsy. 

The alternative possibilities (granting that religious bal- 
lads are an early type) are: that short narrative lyrics on 
ecclesiastical themes emerged directly from clericals and 
that the type was later secularized; or that they emerged 
from the minstrels, and ecclesiastics availed themselves of 
the type ; or that minstrels were solely responsible for the 
early religious ballads, composing them for audiences for 
whom they were especially suitable. But when lingering 
over these hypotheses, one is inclined to give the church a 
greater share of responsibility for the earliest ballads than 
the third hypothesis assumes. 

If the earliest mediaeval ballads, meaning by ballads 
lyrical stories of the type collected by Professor Child, 
were contemporaneously on both religious and heroic sub- 
jects, it is chance, or else the interest of ecclesiastics, that 
has preserved for us specimens of the one type and not of 
the other. If the heroic type, chronicle or legendary, was 
as early as the religious, early examples have not remained 
to show it. Against the hypothesis of contemporaneous- 
ness is the circumstance that songs of all other kinds, min- 
strel and popular, satires, eulogies of princes and heroes, 
songs of victories, love songs, songs of disparagement or 
derision, humorous songs, drinking songs, and the like, 
have descended to us from the Middle Ages. If ballads of 
the heroic type existed early, they should have appeared at 
least as early as the thirteenth century. The wish to im- 
press sacred story may well have afforded the impulse to 
present such narratives in a short lyrical way, and the 



188 ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHUKCH 

presence of narrative is the fundamental differentia, the 
quality distinguishing it from other folk-song, of the bal- 
lad as a lyric type. 

A refrain is not present in the earliest ballad texts nor 
in the fifteenth-century ballads, 32 including the Robin 
Hood pieces. Refrains do not appear in ballads until the 
sixteenth century, though they are frequent in early lyrics 
of other types. Moreover, they are sufficiently accounted 
for in the proportion of ballads in which they are present 
(not more than a fourth) by the fact that the ballads were 
sung. Hymns and carols and many love songs have re- 
frains, and the ballad refrains were handled on the whole 
in their way. They do not resemble the fundamental ite- 
rative lines of dance songs, around which the latter songs 
as a class are built. 33 Ballad refrains are added from 
the outside and are not stable even for the same text, while 
the refrain is the most identifying feature of the average 
traditional dance song. It is well established that the ear- 
liest mediaeval dance songs were not ballads; though the 
latter came to be used occasionally as dance songs, consist- 
ently as such in Denmark. The fundamental characteris- 
tic of ballads, the point of departure for their differentia- 
tion as a lyric type, would be their presentation of charac- 
ters and story in a lyrical way, suitable for short recital 
or for song. It would not be the presence of a refrain, nor 
of incremental repetition, nor parallelism of line struc- 
ture ; for both are often absent from ballads and often pre- 
sent in other types of folk-song. A " situation " mode 

32 Unless in Robin and Gandeleyn. If a refrain is present in this 
ballad it is extraneous to the stanza structure, not part of it. The 
stanzas of the ballad so vary in form and length as to make them 
seem more suitable for recital than for singing. 

33 See Chapter II. 



BALLADS AND CLEKICALS 189 

of narration is not perhaps fundamental, but such a mode 
would be natural in a lyric to be recited dramatically like 
the Judas perhaps, or like St. Stephen and Herod; or it 
might be developed, like repetition and parallelism, in tra- 
ditional preservation. Ballad creation has for its motivat- 
ing impulse the circumstance that characters and their 
story are to be brought before hearers, not in a narrative 
to be read, but briefly and memorably and dramatically in 
a recitational or song way. Only stories which lend them- 
selves well to such handling are eligible material. 

It is possible that very widespread diffusion for the bal- 
lads, especially for the secular ballads, their composition 
in quantity and their popular currency, may have come 
later than is generally assumed. They cannot have been 
very abundant when the makers of the Sloane ms. 2593 
and the Balliol ms. 354 made their collections. These 
men obviously had a taste for popular verse, yet compared 
to their display of related types of folk-verse, of approaches 
to ballads, their showing of ballads proper is meager. 
Had many ballads of the Child type been in general circu- 
lation in Southern England before the Elizabethan period, 
had this type of verse been so recognized, so distinctive and 
current as it was in the later sixteenth and the seventeenth 
centuries, the makers of these, like the makers of later 
manuscript books, might have been expected to give pro- 
portionate space to ballads in their pages. 

The number of early religious ballads remaining is some- 
what slender, too slender for a very solid structure to be 
based upon them ; but their evidence is the most authentic 
that we have. The subject of ballad origins may well be 
re-examined from the angle of approach which these, our 
earliest ballad texts, suggest. The species next to fix at- 



190 EITOLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCH 

tention upon itself is the outlaw ballad of the fifteenth and 
early sixteenth centuries ; but the outlaw ballads come too 
late for dependable significance. Some were plainly to be 
recited; 34 in general they lack the refrain element; and 
they afford no help in explaining the origin of the lyrical 
species. The suggestion which relates the early ballads to 
the religious, not the secular, carols as a type of folk-song, 
which assumes ecclesiastical emergence for the ballads 
prior to their minstrel popularity, or else early adoption 
by ecclesiastics of a new minstrel lyric type, has the dis- 
tinction of novelty, whether or not it seem likely. And 
it is based on fact, not conjecture. The possibility that 
ballad literature began with clericals deserves to be taken 
into account, alongside the hypotheses of ballad origin 
which have been brought forward in the past. 

Few having knowledge of the shifting types and styles 
of popular song would maintain that the folk-songs, the 
dance songs, if you will, of the Anglo-Saxons before the 
Norman Conquest were of the structure and type of the 
Child ballads. The patterns which these exhibit arose 
later. ISTor were the old heroic lyrics of the Germanic 
peoples, whether narrative or not, of the type of the Child 
ballads. In the hypothesis that mediawal ballad literature 
emerged under the influence of clericals, or in something 
like it, may perhaps be found the explanation best satis- 
fying all the conditions. Examination is desirable, from 
this angle of approach, of the early lyrical verse of other 
leading European peoples. The ballad documents of Con- 

34 See the testimony concerning " robene hude and litil ihone " 
and the tale of the " zong tamlene " listed in The Complaynt of 
Scotland, 1549. Edited by J. A. H. Murray, E. E. T. S. (1872). vol. 
I, p. 63. 



BALLADS AND CLERICALS 191 

tinental literatures are no earlier than the English, if so 
early; but the more the available evidence, the better for 
the investigator. A scrutiny of them might lend support 
to the suggestions brought forward here, or it might con- 
tradict them, or it might bring light from some unexpected 
source. 



CHAPTEE VI 

BALLADRY IN AMERICA 

American interest in ballads and in other folk-songs has 
arisen mainly as an aftermath of the quest of Old World 
traditional texts on this side of the Atlantic. Some im- 
pulse has come from other sources. The collection and 
preservation of many popular songs and ballads of the 
Revolution and of the Civil War is to be credited to his- 
torians, although no consistent effort was made at the 
psychological time to assemble and to preserve such pieces. 
Of leading importance was the impetus given to the recov- 
ery of American folk-song by Professor Francis James 
Child. He accumulated a vast number of broadsides and 
orally preserved texts in the Harvard University library, 
and since his death material has been added steadily 
through the vigilant personal interest and the stimulus to 
others of Professor G. L. Kittredge. Professor Kittredge 
has encouraged the gathering and identification of tradi- 
tional texts from various parts of the United States for 
many years, and students of folk-song are deeply in his 
debt. Another historic name among scholars is that of 
W. W. Newell, a pioneer collector of the songs and games 
of American children and a founder of the American 
Folk-Lore Society. In recent decades, many regional col- 
lectors have gathered material, especially along the Atlan- 
tic coast, in the South, and in the Central West, and the 

192 



OLD-WORLD BALLADS AND SONGS 193 

realization has arisen that there is a picturesque body of 
orally preserved song on this side of the Atlantic. Such 
traditional material is of interest to the lover of poetry 
for the occasional flashes of quality which it exhibits and 
for its contrast to book poetry. It is of interest to the 
student of literature for the value as social documents 
of the pieces it preserves, and for the evidence which 
they give concerning the development and transmission of 
folk-songs. Enough material is already available to throw 
light on many points of geographical distribution, and of 
song history, and to establish some main lines of grouping. 

I ODD-WOKLD BALLADS AND SONGS tN" AMERICA 

Of the types of folk-song existent in America, the leg- 
endary and romantic ballads of England and Scotland, 
large numbers of which have emigrated to the New World, 
are those which have been recovered and examined with 
the greatest interest. They have found many enthusiastic 
collectors. 1 If they have not quite monopolized the fore- 

i Some leading collectors are : H. G. Shearin and J. H. Coombs 
for the Cumberland mountains, Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Song 
(1911); C. Alphonso Smith for Virginia (see infra, note 2); 
Eeed Smith for South Carolina (see infra, note 2) ; H. M. Belden 
for Missouri, Journal of American Folk-Lore, vols. 19, 20, 23; A. 
H. Tolman for Illinois, ibid., vol. 29; Phillips Barry for New Eng- 
land, see many papers and texts in the Journal of American Folk- 
Lore, vol. 14 and following; Cecil Sharp and Olive Dame Campbell, 
Folk-Song of the Southern Appalachians (1917) ; Josephine McGill,. 
Folk-Song of the Kentucky Mountains (1917) ; E. F. Piper for 
Iowa (unpublished) ; Louise Pound, Folk-Song of Nebraska and the 
Central West: A Syllabus (1915). By far the largest and most im- 
portant collection is in the Harvard library. 

Illustrative American traditional songs are accessible in the pres- 
ent writer's Oral Verse in the United States, 1921. 

The discussion of balladry in America in the present chapter is 



194 BALLADKY IN AMEKICA 

ground in discussions of American folk-song they have 
nearly done so. They constitute the folk-pieces most 
archaic in style and having the longest history. They are 
those most easily sought and identified by the average 
searcher for traditional material, since they are to be 
found in printed collections, and there is no little mystery 
concerning their origin. They have reached this country 
in various ways. Some surely were brought over by the 
early colonists and were handed down by their descend- 
ants. Others may have been brought over not long after 
by sailors or returned travellers. Still others enter from 
time to time with newcomers from the British Isles. The 
process of importation has not quite ceased. 

Old World ballads in the United States are, on the 
whole, best recovered from regions where the songs and 
song modes of the past have not been displaced by the 
entrance of later songs and song modes. At times such 
texts come to light in cities, but much more characteris- 
tically they are salvaged from remote and isolated com- 
munities unsupplied with later popular songs and relying 
still upon the entertainment of song, instead of upon the 
variety of present devices available for passing the time of 
young and old. Outlying rural districts, particularly 
mountain communities, yield especial results. The best- 
hunting grounds for collectors have been the North Atlan- 
tic States and the Southern mountains, like the Cumber- 
land mountains — the Appalachian region in general ; that 
is, those regions of the United States which were earliest 

indebted in scattered passages to the author's discussion of oral liter- 
ature in the United States in the Cambridge History of American 
Literature, vol. in. Occasionally it uses the same material in illus- 
tration. 



OLD-WORLD BALLADS AND SONGS 195 

settled. In the West, villages and isolated farms and 
ranches yield an occasional Old World ballad, but a text 
is likely to be recovered wherever some newcomer from 
an older community has settled, or, especially, some 
immigrant to the New World; or where the descendants 
of such newcomers have good memories for their parents' 
songs. A few traditional ballads have lingered as nursery 
songs ; for example Lord Randal, The Two Brothers, and 
Larrikin. 

Texts or fragments of nearly 80 of the 305 ballads in- 
cluded in the Child collection have been recovered in the 
United States, 2 mainly from oral sources, sometimes from 
manuscript books. As regards distribution, the Southern 
mountains and the New England states have yielded the 
greatest returns, though some texts have been recovered 
from the central West and even from the far West. Lead- 
ing in popularity among them is Barbara Allen's Cru- 
elty: — 3 

'Twas in the merry month of May 
When the green buds were a-swelling 
Sweet William on his death bed lay 
For the love of Barbara Allen. 

Another widely current favorite is Lord Lovel, sometimes 
transformed to Lord Lover, whose hero goes on a journey 
after bidding farewell to his sweetheart, returns, and finds 
her dead. 

2 See especially Reed Smith, The Traditional Ballad in the South, 
Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 27, pp. 55-66; ibid., 28, pp. 199- 
203, C. Alphonso Smith Ballads Surviving in the United States, 
The Musical Quarterly, vol. II, pp. 109-129. 

3 Unless indicated otherwise, the texts of Old World songs quoted 
in the following pages are central Western. 



196 BALLADEY IN AMERICA 

" where axe you going, Lord Lovel? " she said, 
" where are you going ? w says she. 
"I'm going, my lady Nancy Bell, 
Strange countries for to see, see, see, 
Strange countries for to see." 

Another popular importation is the ballad of Lord Bate- 
man (Bakeman, Bayham, etc.), the Young Beichan of the 
Scottish ballad, who is rescued from a Turkish prison by 
his captor's daughter. She follows him seven years later 
to his own country, arrives on the eve of his wedding to 
another, and herself becomes his bride. The Two Sisters, 
one of whom pushes the other into a mill stream where she 
is drowned, and Geordie, also have considerable currency. 
Lord Randal roams the country under many aliases. As 
recovered in a Colorado railway camp 4 the song tells the 
tragic story of Johnny Randall. 

"Where was you last night, Johnny Randall, my son? 
"Where was you last night, my heart's loving one ? " 
" A-fishing, a-f owling, mother make my bed soon, 
For I'm sick at my heart and I fain would lie down." 

He becomes Jimmy Randall in Illinois, Jimmy Ransing 
in Indiana, Johnny Ramble in Ohio, and Johnny Ran- 
dolph in North Carolina. Most of the Old World bal- 
lads preserved in the United States are upon themes of 
romantic love, of tragedy, and adventure. Little Harry 
Hughes, deriving from Sir Hugh and the Jew's Daughter, 
is a legacy of the mediaeval superstitions against the Jews. 
A riddle ballad remains, The Cambric Shirt, which bears 
some relation to The Elfin Knight, and a few sea pieces 
survive, like The Three Sailor Boys, related to The Mer- 

* By H. C. House. See Modern Language Notes, vol. 17, p. 6. 



OLD-WORLD BALLADS AND SONGS 197 

maid, and The Golden Vanity, or The Lowlands Low. 
What has happened to these Old World pieces in the 
New ? Have they improved or decayed from their Eng- 
lish and Scottish originals ? Some are spun out by repe- 
tition and iteration and lose their cohesion in garrulous- 
ness. Most are made over to agree with a democratic en- 
vironment and with the horizons of their singers. The 
Child ballads have to do with the high born. They tell 
of the adventures of kings and princesses and nobles, com- 
bats, the chase, clan feuds, the domestic tragedies of 
aristocrats. These pass in America into plebeian narra- 
tives of homelier setting; the unknown, in names, or ob- 
jects, or descriptive terms, is made over into the known, in 
the folk-etymological manner. Localizations are changed, 
as well as names and characters. Serious events are often 
vulgarized or made commonplace. The romantic aristo- 
cratic elements are dimmed. Lord Randal's metamor- 
phosis has been mentioned. In many American versions, 
Sir John and Sir Hugh of The Two Brothers become two 
little schoolboys. Sometimes the supernatural is lost, as 
when the devil in some versions of The Ship's Carpenter 
becomes a returned lover; or when, as in some versions of 
The Farmer s Curst Wife, he disappears. A few have 
been utilized as game or dance songs, as Barbara Allen's 
Cruelty and The Two Sisters. The Two Brothers in its 
Nebraska version, seems to be turning into a Western 
song : — 

" what shall I tell your true love, John, 

If she inquires for you?" 
" tell her I'm dead and lying in my grave, 

Way out in Idaho." 



198 BALLADKY IN AMEEICA 

Each ballad may be accommodated to a variety of melo- 
dies; it is a safe generalization that the texts of ballads 
are more constant than the melodies. Occasionally bal- 
lads cross or become disordered and a new amalgam song 
emerges. 5 Earely mannerisms of the English and Scottish 
ballads spread to indigenous pieces. On the whole, the 
degenerative effects of oral preservation are well exempli- 
fied by the mass of -Old World pieces which have been 
recovered in America. Not brought over, or dying out 
early if they were brought over, are heroic tales and 
border ballads, and songs turning on local customs, as har- 
vest songs, carols, and the like. 

But the legendary English and Scottish ballads reaching 
America are not the only ballads to be imported. In 
later British balladry commonplace characters replace the 
aristocrats and other styles the minstrel style. British 
ballads of this later type, on the themes of the broadside 
press of the last two centuries, have far greater currency 
in the United States than do the legendary and romantic 
ballads. Of this type is The Butcher s Boy, in one text 
of which a girl from Jersey City loves a butcher's boy, but 
he deserts her for another " because she has more gold 
than I." At the close of the song the girl hangs herself, 
leaving lines pinned on her breast. It is related to the 
British A Brisk Young Lover. The Boston Burglar, or 
Charleston, is related to A Sheffield Apprentice. The 
speaker says that he was brought up by honest parents but 
his "character was taken " and he could not be cleared. 
He was sent as the " Boston Burglar " to Charleston. 

5 See H. M. Belden, Folk Song in America — Some Recent Publi- 
cations. Modern Language Notes, vol. 34, p. 139. 



OLD-WOELD BALLADS AND SONGS 199 

And every station I would pass 

I'd hear the people say, 
There goes a Boston burgular, 

See he's all bound in iron. 

Jack Williams is a boatman by trade. For the sake of 
a girl be took to robbing and was brougbt back to Sing 
Sing (Newgate) : — 

On Bowery (Chatton) street I did reside, 

Where the people did me know, 
I fell in love with a pretty girl, 

She proved my overthrow. 

Of. greater interest is Betsy Brown, wbicb derives obvi- 
ously from colonial days. 6 A woman's son, Johnny, 
loves Betsy tbe servant. Tbe mother takes Betsy to the 
seaside where she sells her across to " verginny." Her 
son dies and the mother repents her act too late. This 
ballad has been recovered from New England, the central 
West, and the far West. A Nebraska text is in manu- 
script form and preserves the story pretty completely. 

son, son, your love's in vain for we sold betsy cross the 

main; 
My son, my son, my son, says she, your bringing scandal on 
you and me, 

1 would rather see your corpse He dead than to marry betsy a 

servant maid. 

Older still, in all probability, is The Death of a Romish 
Lady which has also reached the central West. It tells 
the story of a lady who became a convert to Protestantism, 
possessed a Bible, and would not " bow to idols." For 

5 C. H. Firth prints a text in An American Garland (1915), p. 69. 



200 BALLADKY IN AMEEICA 

this her cruel mother had her brought before priests and 
burned. 

There lived a Romish lady 
Brought up in proper array, 

Her mother oftimes told her 
She must the priest obey. 

This is to be identified with the Elizabethan " It was a 
lady's daughter, of Paris properly/' introduced into 
Eletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle. The earliest 
text preserved is a reprint from the times of Charles II. 7 
The American texts have been shortened a little, in three 
centuries, and show simplification, but the original narra- 
tive is well preserved. 

Of Old World provenance is also the widely diffused 
Willie and Mary or the Bedroom Window; sometimes 
known also as The Drowsy Sleeper. It hints a tragedy 
not carried out in most texts. 

" Mary dear, go ask your father 

If you my wedded bride can be. 
If he says nay then eome and tell me, 

And I no more will trouble thee." 

" Willie dear, I dare not ask him, 

For he lies on his bed of rest, 
And by his side there lies a dagger 

To pierce the one that I love best." 

Songs of the pirate Captain Kidd and of Turpin the 
highwayman still have currency in American folk-song. 
Father Grumble, or Old Grumble, has many aliases and 
is a song of Old World pedigree, but the same story is 

7 Accessible in The Roxburgh Ballads, vol. I, p. 43. 



INDIGENOUS BALLADS AND SONGS 201 

always told. Father and Mother Grumble exchange tasks 
for the day and the former comes to grief. 

Father Grumble he did say, 
As sure as the moss round a tree, 
That he could do more work in a day 
Than his wife could do in three, three, 
That he could do more work in a day 
Than his wife could do in three. 

Other importations are The Farmer's Boy, the story of a 
poor boy who comes to a farmer's door, and in the course 
of time marries the farmer's daughter and inherits the 
land, The Soldier, who when eloping with a lady with 
a fortune is met by the father and armed men, The Banks 
of Cloudy or The Lover's Return, The Prentice Boy or 
Cupid's Garden, The Rich Merchant of London whose 
daughter drinks poison because loving against her father's 
wishes, the tragedies of Lady Caroline of Edinboro Town, 
and of Mary of the Wild Moor or The Village Bride, 
and the familiar songs, Babes in the Woods, Billy Boy, 
and The Courtship of the Frog and the Mouse. 

The foregoing pieces will serve to illustrate the im- 
ported material, its diffusion, persistence, and the types of 
plots and the patterns of song which have lingered in the 
popular consciousness. Among Old World importations, 
it is the sensational story song, and the humorous ballad 
or song, which have shown the greatest vitality. 

II INDIGENOUS BALLADS AND SONG-S 

Alongside importations from the Old World, many 
types of indigenous song have developed in America. 
There are picturesque songs of pioneer and Western life, 



202 BALLADBY IN AMEKICA 

songs of criminals and outlaws, of soldiers and wars, of 
tragedies and disasters, songs of the tragic death of a 
girl, dying messages and confessions, and songs of the lost 
at sea. Sentimental songs play an important role, and 
religious and moralizing songs, political campaign songs, 
humorous songs, and negro or pseudo-negro and Indian 
songs appear. Some of these are sufficiently narrative to 
deserve classification as ballads, and all should have inter- 
est for collectors. Generalizations concerning folk-song 
are thrown out of focus and are undependable when but 
one type of piece is sought out and studied. All types of 
songs are folk-songs, for the literary historian, which ful- 
fill two tests. The people must like them and sing them 
— they must have " lived in the folk-mouth " — and they 
must have persisted in oral currency through a fair period 
of years. They must have achieved an existence not 
dependent upon a printed original. Questions of origin, 
quality, technique, or style, are secondary. Attempts at 
differentiating traditional songs into popular songs or 
songs made " for " the people, and folk-songs or songs 
made " by " the people, based on some hypothetical man- 
ner of origin or on the continuation of a mediaeval style, 
have been demonstrated many times, when applied to some 
body of folk-song, to be undependable and unsafe. What- 
ever has commended itself to the folk-consciousness and 
has established currency for itself apart from written 
sources is genuine folk-literature. 

Before the American Eevolution, most folk-song was 
probably imported, either orally or in broadside versions ; 
but there were also historical pieces that were indigenous. 
Some early ballads popular in New England, the texts 
of which have not been preserved are: The Gallant 



INDIGENOUS BALLADS AND SONGS 203 

Church, Smith's Affair at Sidelong Hill, and The God- 
less French Soldier* LovewelVs Fight is the oldest re- 
maining historical ballad composed in America of which 
texts are available. It records a contest with the Indians 
in Maine, May 8, 1725. A text put into print about a 
hundred years later begins — 

What time the noble Lovewell came 
With fifty men from Dunstable 

The cruel Pequatt tribe to tame 
With arms and bloodshed terrible — 

This theme was treated by Longfellow in his early poem, 
The Battle of LovelVs Pond. 

Most of the songs and ballads of the Revolution, as 
brought together by collectors 9 from newspapers, period- 
icals, and broadsides, and from the memory of surviving 
soldiers, are semi-literary in character, composed to be 
sung to some familiar tune of English importation. The 
favorite ballad of the Revolution with literary historians 
is Nathan Hale. Many surviving pieces are travesties, 
many express the dissatisfaction of the colonists, and 
some derive from older pieces, as Major Andre's The Cow 
Chace which is based on the familiar ballad, The Chevy 
Chase. Most of the ballads remaining from this period 
are satirical. 

A few indigenous pieces may derive from the War of 
1812, such as James Bird, sl ballad of a hero shot for 
desertion, a camp song in ridicule of General Packing- 
ham, and some verses beginning — 

8 See Professor M. C. Tyler, History of American Colonial Liter- 
ature, 1878. 

9 Chief among them is Frank Moore, Songs and Ballads of the 
American Revolution, 1856. 



204 BALLADEY IN AMERICA 

Then you sent out your Boxer to beat us all about; 
We had an enterprising- brig to beat the Boxer out. . . . 
Then towed her up to Portland and moved her off the town 
To show the Sons of Liberty the Boxer of renown. . 8 . 

and some stanzas which are still sung by children as a 
marching song — 

We're marching down to old Quebec 
While the drums are loudly beating; 
The American boys have gained the day 
And the British are retreating. 

The Texas Bangers, widely current throughout the 
South and West, one; text of which opens — 

Come all you Texas Rangers wherever you may be, 

I'll tell you of some trouble which happened unto me. . . . 

sounds like an echo of the fight with the Mexicans at the 
Alamo in 1833. It is modeled on and sung, to the air 
of the British Nancy of Yarmouth. 

Songs remaining from the Civil War are often sen- 
timental in character, like When this Cruel War is Over, 
and The Blue and the Gray, which are of traceable origin 
yet have entered widely into oral tradition. They are 
songs not ballads. There were numerous camp songs on 
sieges or battles but these faded early. Best remembered 
in folk-song from the period of the Civil War are the 
pseudo-negro songs, many of them the work of Stephen 
C. Foster, Will S. Hays, or Henry C. Work, given dif- 
fusion by the old-time itinerant minstrels. Songs of 
this and related types from the period of the Civil War 
are far more persistent than songs commemorating bat- 
tles or political events. The popular A Hot Time in the 
Old Town Tonight, modeled by its composer on a Creole 



INDIGENOUS BALLADS AND SONGS 205 

song and popularized during the Cuban War, does not 
reflect directly the war that " floated " it, and the songs 
universalized for England and America by the war of 
1914—1918, Tipperary, Keep the Home Fires Burning, 
The Long, Long Trail, Pack Up Your Troubles in Your 
Old Kit Bag, Over There, do not commemorate its lead- 
ing events. In the days of newspapers, ballads or songs 
of battles or important political events are not in demand, 
and do not come into existence. 

Much larger than the role played by songs of historical 
events or important movements is that played by senti- 
mental romantic pieces or by adventure pieces, and by 
certain widely diffused songs, mainly humorous, their 
authorship and origin forgotten, which reflect emigrant 
and frontier life, especially the rush for gold in 1849. 
Such is Joe Bowers, once a freighters favorite. The 
song is supposed to be sung by a Missourian in California 
about 1849-51, who had left behind his hometown sweet- 
heart, Sally Black. 10 

One day I got a letter, 

'Twas from my brother Ike; 
It came from Old Missouri. 

And all the way from Pike. . . . 
It said that Sal was false to me — 

It made me cuss and swear — 
How she went and married a butcher, 

And the butcher had red hair; 
And whether 'twas gal or boy 

The letter never said, 
But that Sally had a baby, 

And the baby's head was red. 

io Unless indication otherwise is made, the text quoted is central 
Western. 



206 BALLADKY IN AMEEICA 

Here is to be grouped Sweet Betsy from Pike, a Cali- 
fornia immigrant song of the fifties, and that song of 
better quality, The Days of Forty-Nine, 

Since the days of old and the days of gold, 
And the days of Forty-Mne. 

The Dreary Black Hills reflects the mining fever of one 
period in the West. 

The Round House at Cheyenne is filled every night 

With loafers and beggars of every kind of sight; 

On their backs there's no clothes, boys, in their pockets no bills, 

And they'll take off your scalp, boys, in those dreary Black Hills. 

Stay away, I say, stay away if you can, 

Far from that city they call Cheyenne; 

Where the blue waters roll and Comanche Bill 

Will take off your scalp in those dreary Black Hills. 

Other sectional songs or humorous narratives or com- 
plaints are Cheyenne Boys, which has various aliases and 
changed locations, as Mississippi Girls, a narrative de- 
scribing the ways of the " boys " and warning the girls 
not to marry them, The Horse Wrangler, who meets a 
cattle king and decides to try cow-punching, and Starv- 
ing to Death on a Government Claim — 

Hurrah for Lane County, the land of the West, 
Where the farmers and laborers are ever at rest; 
There's nothing to do but to stick and remain, 
And starve like a dog on a government claim. 

The three best known and most attractive pieces are all 
three adaptations, reflecting pioneer life. One is Bury 



INDIGENOUS BALLADS AND SONGS 207 

Me not on the Lone Prairie, sometimes called The Dying 

Cowboy j 11 

" bury me not on the lone prairie." 

Those words came slow but mournfully 

From the pallid lips of a youth who lay 

On the cold damp ground at the close of day. . . . 

Another is The Cowboy's Lament, also called sometimes 
The Dying Cowboy — 

As I walked through Tom Sherman's bar-room, 
Tom Sherman's bar-room on a bright summer's day, 
There I spied a handsome young cowboy, 
All dressed in white linen as though for the grave. 

Beat your drums lowly and play your fife slowly, 
Play the dead march as you bear me along, 
Take me to the graveyard and lay the sod o'er me, 
For I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong. 

This song exists in many variants, with changed names 
and localizations, and it has roamed pretty far from its 
eighteenth century original. 12 The third is My Little 
Old Sod Shanty — 

n Adapted from a sea song, the words of which were by W. H. 
Saunders, the music by G. N. Allen, beginning — 

" bury me not in the deep, deep sea," 
The words came low and mournfully, etc. 

with the refrain 

" bury me not in the deep deep sea, 

Where the billowy shroud will roll o'er me." . . . 

12 Mr. Phillips Barry has traced its history in The Journal of 
American Folk-Lore, vol. 24, pp. 341 fF. It is from a song popular 
in Ireland in the eighteenth century, The Unfortunate Rake. The 
refrain lines retain, somewhat incongruously, the suggestion of a 
military funeral appropriate enough in the original song. 



208 BALLADRY IN AMERICA 

The hinges are of leather and the windows have no glass, 
While the board roof lets the howling blizzard in, 

And I hear the hungry cayote as he slinks up through the grass, 
Round the little old sod shanty on my claim. 

The history of this song is sufficiently illustrative of the 
ways of folk-song to be worth recounting. 13 Like so 
many " Western " songs when their genealogy is followed 
out, it is not an indigenous Western piece hut is an 
adaptation of an older song having great popularity, 
namely The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane by Will S. 
Hays, a negro melody of the type familiarized by Stephen 
C. Foster's My Old Kentucky Home, or by The Swanee 
River. 

De hinges dey got rusted and de door has tumbled down, 

An' de roof lets in de sunshine an' de rain, 
An' de only friend I've got now is dis good old dog of mine, 

In de little old log cabin in de lane. 

The Little Old Sod Shanty was printed somewhere about 
the later seventies or eighties in many Nebraska news- 
papers, with the statement that it could be sung to the tune 
of The Little Old Log Cabin. Some old settlers remem- 
ber having cards with photographs of a sod shanty on 
one side and on the other the words of the song. The 
parody adapting the negro song to Western conditions 
was written probably by some one in this region. 14 
Most versions of the song recovered by collectors come from 
Nebraska and the Dakotas, one from Texas. To continue 
the history of The Little Old Log Cabin, it is said that Ira 

13 See The Pedigree of a Western Song, Modern Language Notes, 
vol. 29, p. 30. 

i* According to his friends, by a Nebraskan named Emery Miller, 
when occupying a claim. 



INDIGENOUS BALLADS AND SONGS 209 

D. Sankey, the evangelist, adapted its well-known melody 
for C. W. Fry's religious lyric,I7&e Lily of the Valley, or 
I Have Found a Friend in Jesus. In hymn number 105 
of Gospel Hymns No. 5, widely used in the later decades 
of the nineteenth century, may be found the music which 
served for the various songs, the negro melody, and the 
" Western " and the religious songs. 

There is little " romance " in most of these Western 
American pieces but they reflect the life of the Americans 
who sang and who sing them as faithfully as the English 
and Scottish traditional ballads reflect the life and ways 
of mediaeval aristocrats. They are the most character- 
istically American of our folk-songs, and so wide is their 
diffusion that many are likely to survive for a genera- 
tion or more. They exhibit the interests and tastes, the 
themes and song modes, of those among which they had 
currency. 

Aside from these historical, frontier, and adventure 
pieces, there are now many short narrative pieces, orally 
preserved and apparently authorless, which may fairly be 
called indigenous ballads. And already they are marked 
in an instructive degree by fluctuation of text, variant 
versions, and local improvisations and additions. Most 
have a direct unsophisticated note and traces of rude 
power that lend them the appeal peculiar to folk song. 
An example of an indigenous ballad now current through 
the Middle West and as far Southwest as Texas is that 
of Young Charlotte who was frozen to death at her lover's 
side on her way to a ball. 

Young Charlotte lived by a mountain side in a wild and lonely 

spot, 
There was no village for miles around except her father's cot; 



210 BALLADKY IN AMEKICA 

And yet on many a wintry night young boys would gather there — 
Her father kept a social board, and she was very fair. . . . 

" Such a dreadful night I never saw, my reins I can scarcely 

hold," 
Young Charlottie then feebly said, "I am exceedingly cold," 
He cracked his whip and urged his speed much faster than 

before, 
While at least five other miles in silence had passed o'er. 

Spoke Charles, " How fast the freezing ice is gathering on 

my brow," 
Young Charlottie then feebly said, "I'm growing warmer 



Investigation has shown that this ballad was the com- 
position of a blind poet at Bensontown, Vermont, as far 
back as 1835. 15 The good fortune of its attracting an 
able investigator has cleared np for ns its history. A 
second New England product which has roamed every- 
where is Springfield Mountain, the tragedy of a young 
man mowing hay who was bitten by a " pizen serpent " 
and died. Texts of this have been recovered from regions 
as remote as Texas and Montana. Its historian was able 
to trace its composition to the late eighteenth century. 16 
Of untraced origin but of still greater currency is Poor 
Lorella (known also as The Weeping Willow, Poor Flo- 
ella, Flo Ella., Lurella, Lorla, Lorilla, The Jealous Lover, 
Pearl Bryn, etc.). Down in the valley, under the weep- 
ing willow, lies Lorella in her " cold and silent grave." 

is See Phillips Barry, The Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 22, 
pp. 365-73. 

16 w. W. Newell, Early American Ballads, The Journal of Ameri- 
can Folk-Lore, vol. 13, pp. 105-120. Rattlesnake Song, printed 
among J. A. Lomax's Cowboy Songs, is obviously a somewhat 
maudlin descendant of Springfield Mountain. 



INDIGENOUS BALLADS AND SONGS 211 

She died not from sickness or a broken heart, but was 
killed by her lover, who says that her parents will for- 
give him, since he expects to leave the country " never 
more for to return." 

Down on her knees before him 

She pleaded for her life, 
But deep into her bosom 

He plunged the fatal knife. 

A similar piece, also untraced, is The Old Shawnee. A 
youth asks his sweetheart to take a walk, and talks of the 
day when their wedding is to be. She says she will 
never be his : — 

From my breast I drew a knife, 

And she gave a shrilling cry, 
" Willie dear, don't murder me, 

For I am not prepared to die." 

Then I took her lily white hands 
And swung her around and again around, 

Until she fell in the waters cruel, 

And there I watched my true love drowned. 

The Silver Dagger tells of a young man who courted a 
maiden, but his parents sought to part them on the ground 
of her poverty. When the girl learned this she wan- 
dered down by a river and stabbed herself with a silver 
dagger. Her lover heard her voice, rushed to her, found 
her dying, and killed himself with the same dagger. 

To pass to illustration of American ballads of another 
type, Jesse James claims sympathy for its outlaw hero, an 
American Bobin Hood. The ballad tells of his death 
through betrayal, killed by Bobert Ford. 



212 BALLADKY IN AMEKICA 

Now Jesse had a wife to mourn for his life, 

His children they were brave; 
'Twas a dirty little coward that shot Mr. Howard 

And laid poor Jesse in his grave. 

This song is of late composition and has wide currency 
but chance has failed to record its provenance. Texts 
and the melody have been recovered by many collectors. 
The Death of Garfield reflects moralizing delight in a 
criminal's repentance, a stock motive in eighteenth and 
nineteenth century popular song. Probably it is adapted 
from an Old World piece. 

My sister came to prison to bid her last farewell, 
She threw her arms about me and wept most bitterly; 
She said, " My dearest brother, today you must die, 
For the murder of James A. Garfield upon the scafel high." 

Fuller and Warren tells of a fatal quarrel between rival 
lovers; Casey Jones, of the authorship of which there is 
clearer record/ 7 of a fatal railway run. Once well- 
known ballads, now occasionally to be recovered from 
oral tradition, are The Wreck of the Lady Elgin, 18 The 
Johnstown Flood, and The Burning of the Newhall House 
at Milwaukee. These may be termed ballads in that 
they are simple lyrical narratives handed down orally, 
though but for a short period, their authorship unknown 
to their singers. The sensational stories they tell have 
kept them alive for a while. Usually the tenure of life 
of a ballad is longer when it tells some tragic personal 
story. 

17 See Railroad Men's Magazine, May 1908, November 1910, Decem- 
ber 1911, April 1912. 
is By George F. Root. 



INDIGENOUS BALLADS AND SONGS 213 

As to modes of diffusion, these are many and varied, so 
far as can be determined by the collector. Fairs or cir- 
cuses at which broadsides or sheet music are offered for 
sale have served as agents for diffusion in recent times, 
and s r o have itinerant vendors and entertainers of all kinds. 
Young Charlotte was probably given its impetus by its 
author as he journeyed from Vermont to Ohio and thence 
to Illinois, on his way westward, singing and selling his 
song as he went. Songs learned at school or in childhood 
stay in the memory with especial tenacity. Some of the 
texts of Jesse Jajnes were said by their singers to have 
been learned by them as school children, while others 
said that they had learned the song from farm-hands. 
Country newspapers have preserved many well-cherished 
pieces later pasted into scrap books which have been 
handed down. And, though rarely, song-lovers still copy 
favorite texts into serapbooks, as in Elizabethan days. 
Wandering concert troups, Chautauqua singers, and minor 
singers of all types, stage stars especially, are great agents 
in popularization. The once popular negro minstrels 
helped to universalize many songs, like Old Black Joe 
and My Old Kentucky Home, and real negro singers 
like the Jubilee Singers and the Hampton Institute 
Singers have kept alive many songs. Those familiar 
stage" and parlor songs of the 1890's, After the Ball and 
Two Little Girls in Blue, the first of which was popular- 
ized all over the country by May Irwin and other singers, 
in Hoyt's farce, A Trip to China Town/ 9 are still vigor- 
ous on Western ranches and in villages here and there, 
though they have long been dead in the circles and places 
where they emerged. Shortened Bread, which still has 
19 See C. K. Harris, How to Write a Popular Lyric, 1906. 



214 BALLADRY IN AMERICA 

wide currency in folk-song, among both whites and negroes, 
was one of Blind Boone's songs. Johnny Sands belongs 
to the first half of the nineteenth century. It achieved 
enormous vogue by forming part of the repertory of the 
Hutchinson family, the Continental vocalists, and other 
singing troupes. It was printed in 1847. A striking 
melody, or a striking text or story, usually a personal 
story, given some strong impetus in diffusion, will linger 
in the folk-memory for decades, when not the faintest 
consciousness of its provenance remains. As with im- 
portations from the Old World, so with indigenous folk- 
songs, a piece telling a sensational story, or turning on 
some comic situation, or built about some striking refrain, 
outlasts songs of other types. 

Ill THE SOUTHWESTERN COWBOY SONGS AND THE 

ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS 

That a body of folk-song exists in America which sup- 
ports the theory of " communal " origin for the English 
and Scottish popular ballads is an idea which has made 
considerable headway since it was advanced not many 
years ago. Several writers have found analogy between 
the conditions attending the growth of cowboy songs in 
isolated communities in the Southwest, and the conditions 
under which arose the English and Scottish popular bal- 
lads. Said Mr. John A. Lomax, in a paper given by him 
when retiring president of the American Eblk-Lore So- 
ciety, at its annual meeting, " There has sprung up in 
America a considerable body of folk-song called by 
courtesy i ballads/ which in their authorship, in the 
social conditions under which they were produced, in the 



THE SOUTHWESTEKN COWBOY SONGS 215 

spirit which gives them life, resemble the genuine ballads 
sung by our English and Scottish ancestors long before 
there was an American people " . . . " The Ballad of 
the Boll Weevil and The Ballad of the Old Chisholm 
Trail, and other songs in my collection similar to these, 
are absolutely known to have been composed by groups 
of people whose community life made their thinking sim- 
ilar, and present valuable corroborative! evidence of the 
theory advanced by Professor Gummere and Professor 
Kittredge concerning the origin of the ballads from which 
come those now contained in the great Child collection." 20 
This view was first put forward by Mr. Lomax, who is 
the chief collector of Southwestern folk-song, in the intro- 
duction of his Cowboy Songs. 21 He notes when speaking 
of western communities, how " illiterate people and people 
cut off from newspapers and books, isolated and lonely — 
thrown back on primal resources for entertainment and 
for the expression of emotion — utter themselves through 
somewhat the same character of songs as did their fore- 
fathers of perhaps a thousand years ago." Professor Bar- 
rett Wendell 22 suggested that it is possible to trace in this 
group of American ballads " the precise manner in which 
songs and cycles of songs — obviously analogous to those 
surviving from older and antique times — have come 
into being. The facts which are still available concern- 
ing the ballads of our own Southwest are such as should 
go far to prove or to disprove many of the theories ad- 
vanced concerning the laws of literature as evinced in 

20 Published in the Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 28, Janu- 
ary-March, 1915. For the quoted sentences, see pp. 1 and 16. 
2i New York, 1910. Second edition, 1916. 
22 Cowboy Songs. Introduction. 



216 BALLADKY IN AMEBIC A 

the ballads of the Old World." Ex-President Roosevelt 
affirmed in a personal letter to Mr. Lomax' 28 that " there 
is something very curious in the reproduction here on 
this new continent of essentially the conditions of ballad- 
growth which obtained in mediaeval England." 

The parallel felt by these writers is worked out with 
more specific detail and greater definiteness by Professor 
W. W. Lawrence^, in a passage prefixed to a discussion 
of the ballads of Robin Hood : — 24 

These men living together on the solitary ranches of Texas, 
Arizona, or New Mexico, have been accustomed to entertain 
each other after the day's work is done by singing songs, some of 
which have been familiar to them from boyhood, others of 
which they have actually composed themselves. . . . These cow- 
boy ballads are not the expression of individuals but of the 
whole company which listens to them, and they are, in a very real 
sense, the work of other men than the author. ... The author 
counts for nothing, it will be observed; his name is generally 
not remembered, and what he invents is as characteristic of his 
comrades as of himself. . . . Here we have literature which is a 
perfect index of the social ideals of the body of men among whom 
it is composed, literature which makes no pretense to literary 
form or to the disclosure of the emotions of any one man as 
distinguished from his fellows. There are few communities of 
the present day which are as closely united in common aims and 
sympathies as these bands of Western cowboys, hence there are 
few opportunities for the production of verse which is as truly 
the expression of universal emotion as are these songs. 

Such Western ranches reproduce almost perfectly the condi- 
tions under which the English and Scottish ballads were com- 
posed. 

23 IMd. Prefixed letter, dated from Cheyenne, 1910. See also 
Professor Charles S. Baldwin, English Mediceval Literature (1914) 
p. 19. 

24 Medieval Story. New York, 1911. 



THE SOUTHWESTEKJST COWBOY SONGS 217 

It is obvious from these passages that their writers find 
a real parallel between the conditions leading to the 
the growth in our own time, in certain homogenous com- 
munities of the Southwest, of fugitive folk-pieces like 
those gathered by Mr. Lomax, and the conditions respon- 
sible for the rise in the Middle Ages of the traditional 
ballads of England and Scotland. It is the belief that 
certain types of American folk-song support the theory 
of " communal " composition of " genuine " English and 
Scottish ballads, as expounded in many places by Profes- 
sor Gummere and Professor Kittredge, a belief upheld by 
their Harvard disciples, Mr. Lomax, Professor Walter 
Morgan Hart, 25 Professor W. W. Lawrence, and by others. 
That ignorant and uneducated people may fairly be said 
to have composed, or had a part in composing, some of 
the cowboy, lumberman, and negro songs, is held to be 
evidence that ignorant and unlearned peasants or villagers 
composed, or had a part in composing, the English and 
Scottish popular ballads, or at least that they established 
the type. 

A good case can be made out, from examining such 
material as Mr.- Lomax has cited or published, to exactly 
the contrary effect — namely that the American pieces 
which he finds to be communally composed, or at least to 
have emerged from the ignorant and unlettered in iso- 
lated regions, afford ample testimony, in structure, tech- 
nique, style, and quality, that the English and Scottish 
popular ballads could not have been so composed, nor their 

25 Ballad and Epic (1907), Harvard Studies and Notes in Phil- 
ology and Literature, vol. iv. See also Publications of the Mod- 
em Language Association of America, vol. 21 (1906), and English 
Popular Ballads, 1916. 



218 BALLADKY IN AMEEICA 

type so established. Here, in summary, are the leading 
reasons for this affirmation : — 

First. The greater part of Mr. Lomax's material in 
his Cowboy Songs did not originate among the cowboys 
but migrated among them, brought from different parts 
of the United States, or from the Old World. Especially, 
the better pieces among them are those most certainly not 
indigenous to the Southwest. 

Second. The pieces which may fairly be said to be 
of spontaneous cowboy improvisation are not and never 
will become real ballads, lyric-epics, or stories in verse. 
They are easily the weakest and most structureless pieces 
in the collection. They have won and will win no dif- 
fusion; and many are probably already dead. Certainly 
they stand no such chance of survival as do certain pieces, 
not of communal origin, which have drifted to the South- 
west from elsewhere, commended themselves to the folk- 
consciousness of that region, and retained vitality there 
as in other parts of the country. 

Third. Even the pieces which may be called genuine 
cowboy pieces are no doubt largely adaptations, echoes 
of some familiar model, or built on and containing rem- 
iniscences of well-known texts or airs. Eor the most 
part they may be termed " creations " ina qualified sense 
only. 

Fourth. In general, real communalistic or people's 
poetry, composed in the collaborating manner sketched out 
by Professor Gummere and Professor Kittredge, 26 is too 
crude, too structureless, too unoriginal, too lacking in 

26 By Professor Kittredge in Introduction to English and Scottish 
Popular Ballads, pp. xxiv-xxvii. 1904. By Professor Gummere in 
many books and articles. 



THE SOUTHWESTERN" COWBOY SONGS 219 

coherence and in striking or memorable qualities, to have 
much chance at survival. If a piece is to win wide cur- 
rency, to become fixed in the folk-memory, or get beyond 
the locality which produced it, it must have strong im- 
petus behind it. This may come through its peculiar 
timeliness, or through its preoccupation with a notable 
personality. It may come as a result of tunefulness, a 
memorable story, or striking style, or, again, through 
some especially potent method of diffusion. 27 But the im- 
petus must be present if the piece is to get itself remem- 
bered, and to make its way over the country as a whole. 
Most of these qualities are what the well-attested commu- 
nal improvisations, or creations, those upon which we 
can place the finger, always lack. They have little chance 
at securing the momentum necessary to " float " them, 
as compared with the songs of the old-time itinerant 
negro-minstrels, — for example, " Old Dan " Emmett's, 
Buckley's, the Ethiopian Serenaders', the Fisk Jubilee 
Singers', 28 — or even as compared with such popular par- 

27 The Ulster ballad, Willie Reilly, which has gained considerable 
diffusion in this country, owed its wide currency to the circum- 
stance that it was adopted as a party song. For the mode of dif- 
fusion of various other pieces, see p. 213. 

28 Some idea of their vogue may be had from Brander Matthews's 
article, " The Rise and Fall of Negro Minstrelsy," Scribner's Maga- 
zine, June, 1915. 

Some of the popular old-time minstrel songs have been ritualized 
into, or utilized as game-songs, or " play-party " songs, as the now 
widely diffused Old Dan Tuoher, by Daniel Emmett, or Angelina 
Baker, by S. C. Foster, or many others. See Mrs. L. D. Ames, 
" The Missouri Play-Party," Goldy M. Hamilton, " The Play-Party in 
Northeast Missouri," and E. F. Piper, "Some Play-Party Games 
of the Middle West," printed respectively in The Journal of Ameri- 
can Folk-Lore, vols, xxiv, xxvn, and xxviii. Some of the English 
and Scottish ballads sung in America have been similarly ritual- 
ized. 



220 BALLADBY IN AMERICA 

lor airs as Juanita, Lorena, or to songs borne onward by 
some notable contemporary event, as was A Hot Time by 
the Cnban War, or Tipper ary by the European War. 
Suppose that a piece communally improvised did win 
stability once in a while, the instance would be a rare case 
as over against the folk-songs in established currency 
which did not so originate. But who (and Mr. Lomax 
has not) has certainly, not conjecturally, pointed out for 
America a good ballad, i. e., verse-story, which did orig- 
inate communally and has also obtained widespread dif- 
fusion ? 

Eifth. A hypothesis is surely questionable which sets 
up as standard-giving for the form, type, and genuineness 
of the mass of folk-pieces, and as accounting for their 
quality and diffusion, a mode of origin responsible, not 
for folk-song in general, but at most for a few highly ex- 
ceptional instances. 

It is time to examine a few well-attested communal 
pieces and to note what they are like. A certain percent- 
age of the songs in the collection of Mr. Lomax are per- 
haps genuine cowboy pieces approached from almost any 
point of view. Those which are most typical are related 
very closely to the life of the communities which origin- 
ated and preserved them. Some of these, the editor tells 
us, the singers themselves composed. There are songs 
dealing with the life of the ranch, of the trail, songs 
of stampedes, of the barroom; but chiefly they deal 
with cattle and the cowboys who have them in charge. 
There are a few passing references to their " bosses " ; 
but songs which pertain to these, or to the ranch owners, 
songs of the lives of their employers or their families, do 



THE SOUTHWESTEBN COWBOY SONGS 221 

not appear. A few preserve the style of the ultra-senti- 
mental or " flowery " period of American verse, 29 with 
doubtfully Westernized settings, a few are ascribed to per- 
sonal authors, 30 and some are plainly built on or out of 
well-known songs. Of what may be termed the real cow- 
boy pieces the following verses, cited as representative by 
Professor Lawrence also, will give a good idea : — 

I'm a rowdy cowboy just off the stormy plains, 
My trade is girting saddles and pulling bridle reins, 
Oh, I can tip the lasso, it is with graceful ease; 
I rope a streak of lightning, and ride it where I please. 
My bosses they all like me, they say I am hard to beat; 
I give them the bold stand off, you bet I have got the cheek. 
I always work for wages, my pay I get in gold; 
I am bound to follow the longhorn steer until I am too old. 
Ci yi yip yip yip pe ya. 

Or — 

Come all you jolly cowboys that follow the bronco steer, 
I'll sing to you a verse or two your spirits for to cheer; 
It's all about a trip, a trip that I did undergo 
On that crooked trail to Holbrook, in Arizona oh. 

Or — 

Bill driv the stage from Independence 

Up to the Smokey Hill; 

And everybody knowed him thar 

As Independence Bill. — 

Thar warn't no feller on the route 

That driv with half the skill. 

The song specificially cited by Mr. Lomax, in his article, 31 

29 By Markentura's Flowery Marge, p. 224; or the story of 
Amanda and Young Albon, p. 271. 

so Night-Herding Song, p. 324; or The Metis Song of the Buffalo 
Hunters, p. 72. 

si Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxvni, cvii, p. 16. 



222 BALLADKY IN AMEEICA 

as certainly of communal composition is The Old Chis- 
holm Trail, a text of which is printed in his Cowboy 
Songs. 32 Here are its final stanzas: 

"I went to the wagon to get my roll, 
To come back to Texas, dad-burn my soul. 

"I went to the boss to draw my roll, 

He had it figgered out I was nine dollars in the hole. 

"I'll sell my outfit just as soon as I can, 
I won't punch cattle for no damned man. 

" Goin' back to town to draw my money, 
Goin' back home to see my honey. 

"With my knees in the saddle and my seat in the sky, 
I'll quit punching cows in the sweet by and by." 

The rest of the piece is of the same pattern, or at least 
is no better. Few would dispute its cowboy composi- 
tion. 33 Probably it too follows some model; but it is 

32 It should somewhere be said of Cowboy Songs that it was ob- 
viously put together rather with an eye to the picturesque and ef- 
fective than with an eye to affording material for the solution of 
problems in literary history. Mr. Lomax points this out when he 
terms it " frankly popular." He seems to have drawn on sources 
of all kinds for his materials. 

33 Usually local individual claims to the authorship of popular 
pieces of much diffusion should be accepted with especial caution. 
Those having practical experience in the collection of folk-songs 
need not be reminded that many pieces are claimed as of individual 
composition, in outlying regions, which had no such origin — unless 
for certain added personal tags, insertions, manipulations, or local- 
izings. Mistaken affirmations of authorship are very common. For 
example, Starving to Death on a Government Claim, which has, and 
has had, considerable currency in the central west, was volunteered, 
as of his own recent composition, to a collector by a Dakota lad of 



THE SOUTHWESTEKN COWBOY SONGS 223 

plainly enough the work of some one uneducated and un- 
trained. It is crude, without structure or clearly told 
story, is flat and vulgar in language, and is without strik- 
ing or memorable quality. It has not a single mark of the 
"good," or "genuine" ballads of the Child collection, 
supposed to have won their type, their peculiar quality 
and worth, from the very humbleness of their composers. 34 
The Old Chisholm Trail is not and never will be anything 
like a Child ballad, or like any other memorable ballad. 
It is just about what we should expect from cowboy im- 
provisation. Yet it is a piece definitely pointed out as 
furnishing " corroborative evidence." 

The songs in Mr. Lomax's collection which do have 
memorable quality and have shown vitality, which afford 
the truer analogy for the Old World pieces, are of the 
type of Young Charlotte, The Dying Cowboy, The Lone 
Prairie, The Little Old Sod Shanty, and for these such 
composition cannot be claimed. 35 

Our Western cowboys are at least as intelligent and as 

fifteen; and his authorship was accepted by his community. Yet 
all he had contributed was the localizing of a few names. Breaking 
in a Tenderfoot, reported to the present writer as of local composi- 
tion near Cheyenne, proved to be a rather weak variant of the well- 
known The Horse Wrangler, too weak and garbled to have been 
by any chance the original text. A teacher once gave the present 
writer the familiar counting-out formula, " Wire, briar, limberlock, 
Three geese in a flock," etc. (really an importation from the Old 
World), as certainly of her own creation in childhood; —this in the 
sincere belief that it had so originated. 

34 It is well to remember that not all humble composers are by any 
means either so unskilled or so wholly uneducated that expressions 
like " artistry " or " conscious authorship " are out of the question 
when their creations are considered. Burns himself was a plough- 
boy, the son of a peasant farmer. 

35 For their origin, see pp. 207-209. 



224 BALLADEY IN AMEEICA 

generally gifted as the mediaeval peasant throngs who are 
supposed to have created the Old World ballads, and they 
make a more homogeneous community. When we note 
what they can do and are asked to believe what the medi- 
aeval peasants did — for the older the Child ballads the 
better the quality — we meet insurmountable difficulties. 
The evidence offered for the supposed communal origin of 
the Child ballads is not "corroborative " but the contrary. 
We know definitely what is the best that the cowboys can 
do; but when we compare their products with the Child 
ballads there is almost unbelievable discrepancy. 

One other piece has been definitely stated by Mr. 
Lomax to be certainly of communal origin, the negro song 
The Boll Weevil. It originated in the last fifteen years, 
he says, and was composed by plantation negroes. He 
quotes but one verse of it. 

"If anybody axes you who writ this song 
Tell 'em it was a dark-skinned nigger 
Wid a pair of blue-duekins on 
A-lookin fur a home, 
Jes a-lookin fur a home." 

Apparently the Ballet of the Boll Weevil is a loose- 
structured, shifting, drifting sort of piece, having like The 
Old Chisholm Trail, nothing in common with " good " 
ballads, and not likely to have. It is very much what 
we should expect of a song which emerged from unlettered 
negroes. And one would like to inquire whether it still 
lives, flourishes, and shows promise of improvement, 36 or 
whether it is already dead ? 

36 What songs will persist among the negroes ? After hearing the 
Tuskegee or the Hampton Institute singers, one feels that My Old 
Kentucky Home, The Swanee River, Old Black Joe, and some of the 



THE SOUTHWESTERN COWBOY SONGS 225 

Once more, the very pieces pointed out as giving cor- 
roborative evidence are among the weakest in Mr. Lomax's 
collection. Always those upon which we can place the 
finger as pieces in the composition of which the folk had 
part are those relatively weak and flat, giving no promise 
of a future. The communal pieces generally have no def- 
inite narrative element, and they have neither the struc- 
ture nor the poetic quality of the lyric-epics that consti- 
tute the Child collection. If a piece which is of folk- 
composition may occasionally show this poetic power it 
is because it adapts or follows closely some good model. 
But in such case it could hardly be said to be wholly a 
folk-creation, or to owe its good qualities precisely to the 
" folk " share in its creation. Once more, too, why should 
we suppose that human ability has so fallen since the 
middle ages that untaught throngs could then outdo the 
best produced by similar throngs upon which we can place 
the finger nowadays ? If we keep our eyes on the evi- 
dence, the Child pieces are by far too good to have had 

comic songs of the older minstrelsy will have a far better chance 
at lingering among them than will the inconsequent creations emerg- 
ing from the " communal improvisation " of the negroes themselves. 
It is of interest to find among the songs and fragments of songs 
collected from the country whites and negroes of the South (see 
" Songs and Rhymes from the South," by E. C. Perrow, The Journal 
of American Folk-Lore, April-June, 1915), fragments or stray 
stanzas to be found in, and probably " floated" by, G-. W. Dixon's 
Zip Goon (viii, 69), joined with a verse of T. Rice's old minstrel 
song Clare de Kitchen, Stephen C. Foster's Camptown Races, or 
Gwine to Run All Night (vi, 16), De Boatman's Dance (vii, 26) 
sung by the Ethiopian Serenaders, and the former minstrel favorites 
Lucy Neal (viii, 62) and Lucy Long (viii, 70). The one-time popu- 
lar song I'll Not Marry at All is represented in many stanzas, and 
there are bits of other popular songs, of Mother Goose rhymes, and 
of glee club and college songs. 



226 BALLADBY m AMEEICA 

their origin in any way parallel to that which produced 
The Old Chisholm Trail and The Boll Weevil. 

Before leaving the matter of corroborative evidence, it 
may be well to bring up more support for the statement 
that the bulk of Mr. Lomax's pieces are not of cowboy 
composition but immigrated among the cowboys. Young 
Charlotte, The Dying Cowboy, The Lone Prairie, The 
Little Old Sod Shanty, The Rattlesnake, are not of cowboy 
composition but are immigrants. Bonnie Black Bess tells 
of the deeds of Dick Turpin, the highwayman, and is an 
Old World piece; and so are Fair Fannie More, Rosin the 
Bow, The Wars of Germanie, and Love in Disguise. 
The Old Man Under the Hill is a variant of a Child bal- 
lad. 37 Jack Donahoo tells of an Australian highwayman 
and is obviously imported. A Rambling Cowboy and 
Lackey Bill seem to be the same piece, and to be identical 
with E. C. Perrow's When I Became a Rover, also of Old 
World importation. 38 As for The Railroad Corral, which 
might seem so certainly a cowboy song, except that it is so 
well done, Mr. J. M. Hanson, writing from Yankton, 
South Dakota, to the Literary Digest, April 25, 1914, says 
that it was written by him to the tune of Scott's Bonny 
Dundee, was originally published in Frank Leslie's Mag- 
azine, and may be found in republished form in his 
Frontier Ballads. Mr. Hanson was somewhat surprised 
to find his poem counting as " folk-song." Another piece 
well executed for folk-song and dealing apparently with 
genuine cowboy material is The Ride of Billy Venero. 
But this, with a few localizings and adaptations, is unmis- 

3T No. 278. 

38 " Songs and Rhymes from the South," The Journal of American, 
Folk-Lore, April-June, 1915, p. 161. 



THE SOUTHWESTEKN COWBOY SONGS .227 

takably The Ride of Paul Venarez by Eben E. Kexford. 
Mr. Eexford also might well have felt surprise that bis 
spirited narrative should count as anonymous folk-song. 
The Ride of Paul Venarez had wide currency, after its 
original publication in The Youth's Companion, and was 
long a favorite with reciters. Another striking- piece is 
Freighting from Wilcox to Glebe, having the burden " And 
it's home dearest, home, and it's home you ought to be/' 
of W. E. Henley's Falmouth is a Fine Town (Poems, 
1886), which in turn derived its refrain from a song by 
Allan Cunningham. Whoopee-Ti-Yi-Yo, Git Along Lit- 
tle Bogies owes its jnelody and the opening lines to 
The Cowboy s Lament of some pages earlier, which, as 
Mr. Phillips Barry has pointed out, is an Old World 
song adapted to plainsmen's conditions. Buena Vista 
Battlefield was a favorite parlor song, and is not of 
cowboy composition. The Boston Burglar, Macaffie's 
Confession, Betsy from Pike, Jesse James, The Days of 
Forty-Nine, and many other of the most interesting and 
widely current or memorable pieces, cannot be claimed 
as indigenous to the Southwest (nor is this claim made for 
them) ; nor is there any real proof that any one of them 
is of communal composition. Many are not ready to con- 
cede such origin for them. The influence of Irish " Come 
all ye's " and of death-bed confession pieces is strong on 
pretty much the whole of Mr. Lomax's collection; and 
there are abundant reminiscences of well-known pieces, 
as We'll Go no More A-Ranging (compare Byron's We'll 
Go no More A-Roaming" itself a reminiscence), or The 
Last Longhorn, reminiscent of Bingen on the Rhine. 39 

39 Adaptation of something familiar is the first instinct in popu- 
lar improvisation. Two recent examples from Nebraska may be 



228 BALLADRY IN AMERICA 

Among the pieces cited by Mr. Lomax in his address 
before the Folk-Lore Society is Unreconstructed (included 
in Cowboy Songs under the title Tm a Good Old Rebel), 
which he cites as a " rebel war song/' with the suggestion 

cited. Well-known among the homesteaders of the Sandhill region 
is The Kinkaider's Song, which tells of their life, and celebrates 
Congressman Moses P. Kinkaid, the author of the homestead law. 
The piece is built on and sung to the tune of My Maryland. For 
a second example, let an Omaha paper of July 7, 1915, be quoted: 

" Joe Stecher, like the heroes of old, is now depicted in ballad. 
True, it is ragtime, and parody, at that, but ballad nevertheless it is. 
Here's one they're singing around cafes, using the music of / Didn't 
Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier: 

Ten thousand fans out to Eourke Park went; 
They will never go there again. 
Ten thousand mat bugs' hearts are aching 
From the sight of Cutler's gizzard breaking. 

They all saw Joe Stecher, 
They all dough had bet. 
So through their sobs 
We heard them cry: 

They didn't raise Kid Cutler to be a wrestler: 
They brought him up to be a real guy's toy. 
Who dares to place a foot on the mattress 
And spill our darling Joe-y? 

Let would-be wrestlers arbitrate their troubles. 

It's time to can that tiresome Bull.' 

There'd be no punk bouts today, now that the bunch can see 

That they can't produce a guy to throw our Steche-r-r-r-rr. 

There is also a song to the tune of Ballin' the Jack, and another to 
Wrap Me in a Bundle." 

The Kinkaider's Song and Joe Stecher afford quite typical ex- 
amples of songs which are, more or less, of folk-composition. The 
former is the more creditable, and was made by some one of better 
education, while the Joe Stecher pieces are of the same general char- 
acter and quality as The Old Chisholm Trail and The Boll Weevil. 



THE SOUTHWESTEKN COWBOY SONGS 229 

that the rebel songs were perhaps superior to those of 
the same class which were of Yankee origin. But this 
" rebel war song/ 7 or " cowboy song," is one of the best 
poems of Innes Eandolph (1837-1887) who was for a 
time connected with the Baltimore American. Mr. Ean- 
dolph wrote the song to satirize the attitude of some of 
his elders. A text of his poem, from which Mr. Lomax's 
folk-piece has lost but a few lines, is accessible in The 
Humbler Poets* A volume of Mr. Randolph's verse 
was published after his death, edited by his son Harold 
Randolph. 

Another piece cited which is of high quality is Silver 
Jack; and it tells a complete story dramatically; but 
Silver Jack 41 sounds, as Mr. Lomax points out, suspi- 
ciously like newspaper verse. It is not the work of one 
crude and uneducated but of an author trained and skilful. 
Similarly with a second piece, which is of better quality ; 
it shows skilful use of dialect spelling and relative sophis- 
tication. 

But is it likely that any of these pieces will live, or win foothold in 
other regions? 

40 A collection of newspaper and periodical verse, 1886-1910, 
edited by Wallace and Fran'ces Rice. Chicago, 1911. See p. 322. 

4i A newspaper clipping of this piece, having as title Jack the 
Evangelist, is pasted in a scrap-book of newspaper verse made be- 
tween 1885 and 1900 by N. K. Griggs of Lincoln. Mr. Griggs was 
the author of Lyrics of the Lariat, Hell's Canyon, and later unpub- 
lished verse, and it is possible that he composed Silver Jack. His 
wife and his daughter, Mrs. H. B. Alexander, recall his frequent reci- 
tation of it, but hesitate to pronounce it his, since the newspaper 
verses in the scrap-book are unsigned. Silver Jack has been found 
in Iowa, according to E. F. Piper of Iowa City, as well as in Michi- 
gan and Texas. He says that he has heard it attributed to the 
late John Percival Jones, United States Senator from Nevada. 
To Professor Piper is owed the identification of The Ride of Billy 
Yenero with Eben E. Rexford's poem. 



230 BALLADEY IN AMEEICA 

"I've been in rich men's houses and I've been in jail, 
But when it's time for leavin' I jes hits the trail; 

I'm a human bird of passage and the song- I trill 
Is ' Once you get the habit why you can't keep still.' " 

That is verse of the school of the newspaper or dialect poet, 
not of the composition of the unlettered. 

That a song is current in a certain community, or liked 
by a certain class, is not testimony that it originated 
among those who sing it, but pretty nearly the contrary. 42 
It may have found its way among them in some such 
manner as The Railroad Corral and The Little Old Sod 
Shanty found their way among the cowboys; or as Casey 
Jones and Life's Railway to Heaven have been adopted 
by railway people. 

To reiterate, in the body of Western American folk- 
song, the pieces of proved vitality, most compact in struc- 
ture and affording the truest analogy to the Child ballads, 
are not those which are the work of uneducated people of 
the Middle West or the South, in spontaneous collabora- 
tion. The few rough improvisations which we can iden- 
tify as emerging from the folk themselves, — which we 

4 2 The songs of a new community usually enter by way of immi- 
gration. See, as a random example, Jamaican Song and Story, col- 
lected and edited by Walter Jekyl. Appendices, Traces of African 
Melody in Jamaica, C. S. Myers, English Airs and Motifs in Ja- 
maica, Lucy E. Broadwood, London, 1907. The testimony of Mr. 
Myers (p. 284) is that: "The majority of Jamaican songs are of 
European origin. The negroes have learned them from hearing 
sailor's chanties, or they have adapted hymn tunes." And Miss 
Broadwood (p. 285) writes to the same effect. "By far the greater 
part of the Jamaican tunes and song-words seem to be reminiscences 
or imitations of European sailor's chanties of the modern class; or 
of trivial British nursery jingles, adopted as all such jingles become 
adopted." 



BALLAD MAKING 231 

actually know to be the work of unlettered individuals or 
throngs, — are those farthest from the Child ballads in 
their general characteristics. The pieces cited speci- 
ficially as " corroborative " are inferior, will soon be ex- 
tinct, and offer no dependable evidence. 

IV BALLAD MAKING AS A 

A final affirmation to be examined is that there u will 
be no more ballads," that " ballad-making is a closed 
account," The following, added to an interesting and 
well-written discussion of the mediaeval ballads, is a 
typical statement. " True ballads lasted long after the 
middle ages, but mainly by repetition or modification of 
those already made. With every century the chances 
for a new ballad were fewer, until now the ballad has 
long been extinct as a form of composition. There will 
be no more ballads ; for the conditions under which 
they are produced are long passed." 43 " Conditions fav- 
orable to the making of such pieces," said Professor Gum- 
mere, " ceased to be general after the fifteenth century." 
The same scholar remarked in many places that " Ballads 
can not be made now, at least among civilized races," 

43 C. S. Baldwin, English Mediaeval Literature (1914), p. 243. 
And so Professor Kittredge in his introduction to the Cambridge 
English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1904): "Ballad-making, 
so far as English-speaking nations are concerned, is a lost art", and 
the same may be said of ballad-singing." In 1915 he wrote (C. 
Alphonso Smith, " Ballads Surviving in the United States," The 
Musical Quarterly, January, 1916) that if he were again summing 
up the facts he would modify his statement that ballad-singing is a 
lost art, either in Great Britain or in the United States, evidence 
for its survival having come in in the last decade; but the state- 
ment that ballad-making is a lost art he did not modify. 



232 BALLADKY IN AMEBIC A 

that " under modern conditions, ballad-making is a closed 
account." 44 Statements to the same effect by many others 
might be cited. 

Unless style determines what are genuinely ballads and 
what are not, the making of ballads, i. e.j short verse-nar- 
ratives of singable form, is not a closed account ; and there 
is no reason why it ever should be such. Nor is the mak- 
ing of " popular " or " folk " ballads extinct, meaning by 
this short lyric tales apparently authorless, preserved 
among the people, and having an existence which has be^ 
come purely oral and traditional. The mode in ballad- 
making has changed and will change. There will be 
no more Child ballads, for they preserve a style estab- 
lished in bygone centuries. But styles change in folk 
poetry as they do in book poetry, There is a " history of 
taste " for folk poetry just as for book poetry. There 
are as great differences between the folk poetry of the 
sixteenth and the twentieth centuries as between the book 
poetry of the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. Folk 
poetry is not a fixed thing to rise and die but a shifting 
thing. The test of what may be termed folk-songs or folk 
ballads should not be the retention of a mediaeval style, and 
certainly it should not be some hypothetical communal-mys- 
tic manner of origin. They are folk-songs if the people 
have remembered them and sung them, if they have an ex- 
istence apart from written sources, and if they have been 
given oral preservation through a fair period of years. 
As pointed out earlier, in treating balladry in America, at- 
tempts at differentiating traditional song into " popular 

44 The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. II, xvii, p. 
448; Old English Popular Ballads, p. xxvii; The Popular Ballad, 
pp. 16, 337, etc. 



BALLAD MAKING 233 

songs," or songs made for the people, and " folk-songs " 
or songs made by the people, based on some hypothesis 
of distinctive origin or distinctive style, are undependable 
and unwarranted. Such differentiation is borne out by 

the study of no body of homogeneous folk-song, whether 
regional or national. 

When we contrast the older and newer in folk song it 
becomes obvious that the superiority for persistence in 
the popular mouth belongs with the former; nor is this 
to be wondered at. The older singer composed for the 
ear; otherwise his work was vain. The newer writes for 
the eye, both words and music; instead of professional 
musicians as agents of diffusion we now have printing. 
Skill in creating memorable songs is more likely to char- 
acterize composition of the first type than of the second. 
Much in modern song is unsingable and unremember- 
able; no one can expect it to make a deep impression on 
the popular mind. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
poets, whatever their class, were likely to be singers too. 
If we approach popular song from the side of musical 
history, it is clear enough that contributions to folk-song 
should be especially rich at a time when the connection 
between composition and delivery was very close. In the 
sixteenth century song was as nearly universalized as it 
is likely to be for a long time to come. Some musical pro- 
ficiency was demanded of nearly everybody whether be- 
longing to the upper classes or to the lower. The ren- 
aissance lyric, words and music, seems to have had its 
origin in the higher culture of the times but it attained 
unparalleled popularity. Acknowledgment that the 
period of the English renaissance had the most memorable 
style in folk-song is not the same thing, however, as 



234 BALLADEY IN AMEEICA 

acknowledging that only such folk-songs as exhibit this 
style are " genuine. 7 ' Conformity to a mediaeval style 
may not logically be insisted upon as a test of what is 
truly a folk ballad and what is not. 

Already there are in America many short narrative 
pieces current over the country-side, the authorship and 
the mode of origin of which are lost; and it is these, 
not the transient improvisations of cowboys or negroes, 
which form the better analogues for the English and Scot- 
tish ballads. From them a selection of texts and variant 
versions, with notations of parallels and Old World re- 
lationships, could be built up that would be of formidable 
and instructive proportions. Keference is made to pieces 
like Jesse James, The Death of Garfield, Texas Bangers, 
James Bird, Boor Lorella, Young Charlotte, Springfield 
Mountain, Johnny Sands, Casey Jones, and other floating 
stories in verse which were discussed at some length in a 
preceding section. There will always be, very likely, a 
body of short narrative poems, their authorship and origin 
lost, preserved in outlying regions. They will shift in 
style but they will ever be behind contemporary song 
modes by a generation or more. The style of present day 
traditional song over the United States is, on the average, 
many decades behind that prevailing in contemporary com- 
positions. In eighteenth-century England and Scotland, 
the discrepancy was naturally much greater. A large 
body of song in the mediaeval style still lingered, along- 
side pieces on later themes of middle class life, in a later 
manner, and pieces of contemporary creation. The older 
style is the more memorable ; it was of higher quality and 
it persisted longer than will its successors. But it should 
not be a test of the genuineness of a piece as folk-song 



BALLAD MAKING 235 

that it continues the style of sixteenth, or seventeenth cen- 
tury popular song — any more than some conjectural 
manner of origin should be such a test. 

Why, as a general proposition, should something vague 
or romantic be so liked, when the origin of folk-poetry is 
in question ? Is it a heritage from the romanticism of the 
period when interest in ballads arose and their origin 
was first made the subject of discussion? Here are some 
typical sentences from Andrew Lang: 

"No one any longer attributes them to this or that author, 
to this or that date ... its birth [the ballad's] from the lips 
and heart of the people may contrast with the origin of art 
poetry. . . . Ballads sprang from the very heart of the people, 
and flit from age to age, from lip to lip of shepherds, peasants, 
nurses, of all that continue nearest to the natural state of man. 
. . . The whole soul of the peasant class breathes in their bur- 
dens, as the great sea resounds in the shells cast up from its 
shores. Ballads are a voice from secret places, from silent 
places, and old times long dead." 

Yet more typical is this from Theodor Storm's Im- 
metisee (1851), formerly read so often in our schools 
that the view it presents was brought before thousands 
of student readers each year: 

" [These songs] were not made; they grow; they fall out of 
the air. They fly over the land like gossamer, hither and thither, 
and are sung in a thousand places at once. Our inmost doings 
and sufferings we find in these songs; it is as though we had 
helped in composing them." 

And compare Mr. Lomax's — 

" They seem to have sprung up as quietly and mysteriously as 
does the grass on the plains." 



236 BALLADKY IN AMEKICA 

This is not very solid ground and it is hardly likely that 
the next generation of scholars and students will linger 
upon it. Belief in the origin of the mediaeval ballads by 
communal improvisation in the dance, and belief in the 
extinction, with mediaeval conditions, of the ballad as a 
literary type, seem to the present writer to have emerged 
from and to belong to a period of criticism which deliber- 
ately preferred the vague and the mystical for all problems 
of literary and linguistic history — mythological explana- 
tion of the Beowulf story, multi-handed composition of the 
Homeric poems, mystical theories of the origin of lan- 
guage. These originate in romance but they readily fade 
in a literal, anti-romantic period like our own. 

To what degree, one is tempted to ask, is the scholarly 
and critical enthusiasm for ballads of the last hundred 
years, or more, due to this romantic attitude? But for 
their fascinating mystery, would the learned world have 
preoccupied itself, in the same measure, with ballads? 
Perhaps when the cloud of romanticism overhanging it 
has vanished utterly, we may again come to look on bal- 
ladry as did the cultivated world in the days of 
humanism. 



IKDEX 



Abraham and Isaac, the Bronie, 

172. 
Adam Bell, Clin o' the Clough, 
and William of Cloudeslee, 38. 
Adam lay y-boundyn, 175. 
Adolfi, Johann, 71. 
After the Ball, 92, 213. 
Akkas, The, 10. 
Aldhelm, 94, 184. 
Alexander, Mrs. H. B., 229. 
Allen, G. N„ 207. 
Alliterative epithets, 109. 
Als I yod on ay Hounday, 165. 
Ames, Mrs. L. D., 61, 219. 
American ballads, 192, ff. 
Anatomy of Melancholy, 45. 
Andamanese, the, 10, 25. 
Andamese, the, 22. 
Andersen, J. C, 22. 
Anderson, Robert, 90. 
Andrew Lammie, 109. 
Angelina Baker, 219. 
Annals of Waverley, the, 168. 
Annandale, H., 74. 
Ascham, Roger, 44, 98. 
Assassination of J. B. Marcum, 

The, 106. 
Aube, the, 167. 



Babes in the Woods, 201. 
Babylon, 121, 122, 134, 144, 168. 
Bakairi, the, 26. 



Baldwin, C. S., 37, 65, 87, 216, 

231. 
Ballad affiliations, 171. 
Ballade, the, 38, 42, 43, 45, 46, 

48, 77, 85, 111, 142, 169. 
Ballad and the dance, the, 36. 
Ballad dance, the, 27. 
Ballads and clericals, 183. 
Ballads and the illiterate, 87. 
Ballads as the earliest poetic 

form, 27-35. 
Ballad of Reading Gaol, 158. 
Ballad of Twelfth Day, A, 164, 

171, 180. 
Ballad style, the, 120. 
Ballin' the Jack, 228. 
Banks of Claudy. 201. 
Bannockburn song, 50, 78. 
Barbara Allen, 53, 68, §0, 92, 93, 

110, 137, 195, 197. 
Barbour, John, 38. 
Barrack Room Ballads, 101. 
Barry, Phillips, 124, 137, 193, 

207, 210. 
Battle of Harlaw, The, 81. 
Battle of Lovell's Pond, The, 203. 
Battle of Maldon, The, 170-. 
Battle of Otterbowrne, The, 76, 

81, 102, 108, 110, 167, 173. 
Baum, P. F., 164. 
Bedier, J., 48, 68. 
Beck, Jean, 166. 
Bedroom Windoic, The, 200. 



237 



238 



INDEX 



Beers, Henry, 37, 95, 148. 

Beginnings of poetry, the, 1-35. 

Belden, H. M., 123, 193, 198. 

Betsy Brown, 199. 

Betsy from Pike, 206, 207. 

Bicester, 185. 

Billy Boy, 133, 201. 

Bingen on the Rhine, 137, 227. 

Bird, James, 203, 234. 

Bitter Withy, The, 110, 126, 171. 

Blind Boone, 214. 

Bludy Sark, The, 149. 

Blue and the Gray, The, 204. 

Boas, Franz, 20, 22. 

Boatman's Dance, De, 225. 

Bohme, Franz, 5, 68, 75, 76, 157, 

169. 
Boll Weevil, The, 106, 215, 224, 

226, 228. 
Bonny Birdy, The, 80. 
Bonny Black Bess, 226. 
Bonny Dundee, 226. 
Boros, the, 10, 22, 30, 145. 
Born is the Babe, 126. 
Boston Burglar, The, 198, 227. 
Botocudos, The, 9, 10, 25, 26, 34. 
Boynton, J. H., 174. 
Bradley, Henry, 108. 
Bradley, W. A., 106. 
Breaking in a Tenderfoot, 223. 
Brevity of Indian Songs, The, 31. 
Bring Us Good Ale, 126. 
Brisk Young Lover, A, 198. 
Broadwood, Lucy E., 230. 
Brockhaus, F. A., 40. 
Brome Abraham and Isaaj, The, 

172. 
Browne, George, 20. 
Brown, Carleton F., 175. 
Brown of Falkland, Mrs., 90, 109. 
Brown Robin's Confession, 168. 



Brown, Theron, 129, 159. 
Bruce, Michael, 42. 
Brunanburh song, 170. 
Bryant, F. K, 123, 148, 155. 
Biicher, Karl, 5, 22, 157. 
Buena Vista Battlefield, 138, 227. 
Buffalo Gals, 54. 
Burlin, Natalie Curtis, 131. 
Burning of the Newhall House, 

The, 212. 
Burrows, G., 10. 
Burton, Frederick K, 2, 16, 32. 
Burton, Robert, 44. 
Bury Me not on the Lone Prairie, 

138, 206. 
Bushmen, The, 15, 16. 
Butcher's Boy, The, 198. 
Butterworth, Hezekiah, 129, 159. 
By Markentura's Flowery Marge, 

221. 



Gabham, Thomas de, 185. 
Callaway, H., 34. 
Cambric Shirt, The, 196. 
Campbell, Olive Dame, 137, 152, 

193. 
Camptown Races, The, 225. 
Canterbury Tales, 81. 
Captain Jinks, 54, 63. 
Captain Kidd, 105. 
Carol, The, 45, 47, 50, 77, 145, 

169, 172, 174. 
Carol of the Sice Rose Branches, 

127. 
Carnal and the Crane, The, 110, 

165, 167, 168, 172. 
Carter, William, 124, 210. 
Casey Jones, 105, 212, 230, 234. 
Castel of Love, 186. 
Chamberlain, A. F., 22. 



INDEX 



239 



Chambers, E. K., 102, 103, 143, 

185. 
Chansons d'aventure, 110, 165. 
Charleston, 198. 
Charms, The, 170. 
Chase that Squirrel, 63. 
Chaucer, 43, 48, 97, 110, 160, 

168, 181. 
Cherry Tree Carol, 126, 167, 172. 
Chevy Chase, 38, 40, 99, 148, 203. 
Cheyenne Boys, 206. 
Child, F. J., 42, 53, 88, 89, 95, 

103, 111, 146, 163, 192. 
Children's game songs, 57 ff. 
Child Slain by the Jews, The, 

172. 
Child Waters, 96. 
Chippewa song, 13, 16, 19, 21, 

29, 33. 
Christ Comes, 175. 
Clare de Kitchen, 225. 
Cleasby-Vigfusson, 69. 
Codrington, R. H., 22. 
Cohen, Helen Louise, 43, 48, 142. 
Colbrand (Guy of Warwick), 185. 
Cold-Water Pledge, The, 133. 
Coleridge, S. T., 45. 
Columbus, Ferdinand, 23. 
Combs, Jack, 106. 
11 Communal " authorship and 

ownership, 413. 
Complaynt of Scotland, The, 54, 

81, 94, 190. 
Continental Vocalists, The, 214. 
Coombs, J. H., 193. 
Cotgrave, R., 44, 82. 
Courtship of the Frog and the 

Mouse, 201. 
Cowan, James, 30. 
Cowboy's Lament, The, 137, 207, 

227. 



Cowboy songs, 214 ff. 
Cow Chace, The, 203. 
Cox, E. G., 70. 
Cruel Brother, The, 80. 
Culin, Stewart, 29. 
Cunningham, Allan, 227. 
Cupid's Garden, 201. 
Curtis, Natalie, 2. 
Cynewulf, 141. 



Dahlman, F. C, 71. 

Dance songs proper, 47-67, 81. 

D'Angrera, Peter Martyr, 24. 

Danish ballads, 170. 

Danish dance songs, 69-72. 

Dante, 41. 

Darby, Loraine, 64, 94. 

Days of Forty-Nine, The, 206, 

227. 
Death of a Romish Lady, The, 

92, 199. 
Death of Garfield, The, 212, 234. 
Debes, Lucas, 74. 
Delia Cruscans, The, 122. 
Deloney, Thomas, 38, 42, 99, 108. 
Densmore, Frances, 2, 13, 18, 30, 

33. 
Dialogue and situation songs, 

139-146. 
Dick of the Cow, 82. 
Ditmarsh folk of Holstein, 68, 71, 

75. 
Dives and Lazarus, 168. 
Dixon, G. W., 225. 
Douglas, Gawain, 48. 
" Dream " songs, 13. 
Dreary Black Hills, The, 206. 
Drowsy Sleeper, The, 200. 
Dyboski, Roman, 177, 178. 
Dying Calif ornian, The, 138. 



240 



INDEX 



Dying Cowboy, The, 106, 137, 207, 

223, 226. 
Dunbar, William, 44. 

Earl Brand, 137, 160, 167. 

Earl of Mar's Daughter, The, 79. 

Ealdhelm, 94, 184. 

Edom o' Gordon, 160. 

Edward, 48, 111, 115, 118, 122, 

134, 139, 140, 148, 160, 163, 

168. 
Ehrenreich, Dr. Paul, 9, 25, 26. 
Elfin Knight, The, 196. 
Emmett, " Old Dan," 219. 
English ballads and the church, 

162-191. 
Eskimo, the, 10, 20, 25, 34. 
Estrifs, 110. 
Ethiopian Serenaders, The, 219, 

225. 
Evergreen, Allan Ramsay's, 103. 
Extinction of ballad making, 231 

if. 

Fabyan, Robert, 49. 

Fair Fannie Moore, 226. 

Fair Flower of Northumberland, 
The, 42, 99, 108. 

Fair Janet, 80. 

Fair Margaret and Sweet Wil- 
liam, 137. 

Falmouth is a Fine Town, 227. 

Parmer's Boy, The, 201. 

Farmer's Curst Wife, The, 197. 

Faroe Island ballads, 73, 166. 

Father Grumble, 200. 

Fehr, Bernhard, 175. 

Fenner, T. P., 129. 

Fillmore, J. C, 24. 

Firth, C. H., 99, 199. 

Fisk Jubilee singers, 219. 



Five Joys of Christmas, The, 126. 
Fletcher, Alice C, 1, 2, 10, 16, 

17, 21, 31. 
Fletcher, John, 92, 200. 
Flodden Field, 42, 99, 167. 
Fliigel, E., 164, 176. 
Ford, Robert, 211. 
Forty-Five Bottles a-Hanging on 

the Wall, 132. 
Foster, Stephen C, 204, 208 1 , 219, 

225. 
Four Elements, The, 166. 
Freighting from Wilcox to Glebe, 

227. 
French dance songs, 68. 
Froissart's Chronicles, 97, 160. 
Fry, C. W., 209. 
Fuller and Warren, 212. 
Furnivall, F. J., 82, 172, 175, 

186. 

Gallant Church, The, 203. 
Gardener, The, 108. 
Gascoigne, George, 44. 
Gawayn and the Green Knight, 

47. 
Cray Goshawk, The, 136. 
Gennep, A. van, 8. 
Geordie, 196. 
Geste of Robin Hood, 98, 110, 111, 

116, 139, 165. 
Ghost-dance songs, 14. 
Gillen, F. J., 34. 
Gilman, B. I., 3. 
Godless French Soldier, The, 203. 
Golden Vanity, The, 197. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 92. 
Gomes, E. H., 30. 
Gomme, Alice, 47, 60, 64, 65, 144. 
Gray Cock, The, 110, 167. 
Green Gravel, 59. 



INDEX 



241 



Green Grass, 59. 

Green Grass Grows All Bound, 
132. 

Greg, W. W., 164. 

Griggs, N. K., 229. 

Grosse, Ernst, 8. 

Gummere, F. B., 3, 6, 9, 27, 28, 30, 
36, 46, 50, 62, 68, 73, 82, 83, 
87, 88, 96, 98, 99, 107, 113, 116, 
117, 121, 154, 157, 215, 218, 
231. 

Gnindtvig, S., 50, 72, 90. 

Gwine to Run All Night, 225. 

Hag en's Dance, 71. 

Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here, 

158. 
Hako, The, 18, 19, 154. 
Hale, Nathan, 203. 
Hales, Thomas de, 176. 
Hamilton, Goldy M., 64, 219. 
Hamlet, 99. 
Hampton Institute singers, 213, 

224. 
Hangman's Tree, The, 112, 136. 
Hanson, J. M., 226. 
Hardy, John, 93. 
Harris, C. K., 213. 
Harrowing of Hell, The, 172, 173. 
Hart, W. M., 28, 65, 83, 88, 104, 

111, 139, 142, 146, 217. 
Haureau, B., 185. 
Hays, Will S., 204. 
Haytians, The, 23. 
Healing song, 20. 
He bare him up, he tare him 

down, 176. 
Henderson, T. F., 38, 149. 
Henley, W. E., 227. 
Henryson, Robert, 149. 
Herbert, a minstrel, 185. 



Here Comes Three Dukes A-Rov- 
ing, 93. 

Here's a Soldier, 60. 

Hodson, T., 34. 

Holy Rollers, the, 75. 

Holy Well, The, 110, 126, 172. 

Horse Wrangler, The, 206, 223. 

Horstmann, Carl, 172. 

Hot Time in the Old Town To- 
night, 158, 204, 220. 

Howards, the, 167. 

House, H. C, 196. 

Howitt, A. W., 14, 20, 30. 

Hoyt, C. K., 213. 

Hudson, W. H., 28. 

Hugh of Lincoln, 168. 

Hulme, W. H., 172. 

Humboldt, A. von, 35. 

Hunting of the Cheviot, The, 76, 
81, 107, 108, 147, 154, 167, 173. 

Hunt Is Up, The, 51, 54, 82. 

Hustvedt, S. B., 42. 

Hutchinson Family, the, 214. 

Hypurinas, the, 26. 



Icelandic dance songs, 69. 

I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a 
Soldier, 106, 228. 

I Have Found a Friend in Jesus, 
209. 

I Have Twelve Oxen, 125. 

Fll not Marry at all, 225. 

I'm a Good Old Rebel, 228. 

Improvisation and folk-song, 153- 
161. 

" Incremental repetition," 121- 
139. 

Individual authorship and own- 
ership of primitive song, 13- 
27. 



242 



INDEX 



Inter diabolus et virgo, 123, 164, 

184. 
Irwin, May, 213. 



Ivanhoe, 97. 

Jack Combs, 106. 

lack Donahoo, 226. 

Jack the Evangelist, 229. 

Jack Williams, 199. 

James Bird, 203, 234. 

James, Sir H., 10. 

Jamie Douglas, 147. 

Jeanroy, Alfred, 48, 68, 105. 

Jealous Lover, The, 210. 

Jekyl, Walter, 230. 

Jesse James, 105, 106, 211, 213, 

227, 234. 
Jew Boy in an Oven, A., 172. 
Jew's Daughter, The, 168. 
Jim along Jo, 54, 63. 
Jock o' the Side, 82. 
Joe Bowers, 205. 
Joe Stecher, 106. 
John Brown, 54, 105, 106, 152, 

166. 
John, Come Kiss Me Wow, 52. 
Johnstown Flood, the, 212. 
Johnny Armstrong, 82. 
Johnny Campbell, 110, 167. 
John Hardy, 93, 137, 152. 
Johnny Sands, 214, 234. 
Johnson, Samuel, 42. 
Jolly Old Miller, The, 61, 62. 
Jones, John Percival, 229. 
Jonson, Ben, 44. 
Juanita, 220. 
Jubilee Singers, the, 213. 
Judas, 76, 123, 136, 142, 164, 166, 

171, 173, 178, 179, 184, 189. 
Judas Iscariot, 164. 



Juniper Tree, The, 62. 
Junod, H. A., 30. 

Kaffirs, the, 26. 

Karok, the, 1. 

Keep the Home Fires Burning, 

152, 205. 
Ker, W. P., 37, 38, 100, 143, 180. 
Kidd, Captain, 105. 
Kilmacrankie, 62. 
King Cnufs Song, 50. 
King Denis of Portugal, 141. 
King Estmere, 48, 78, 94, 109, 

118, 160. 
King Horn, 100. 
King John and the Bishop of 

Canterbury, 118. 
Kinkaid, M. P., 228. 
Kinkaiders' Song, 228. 
Kipling, Paidyard, 101. 
Kitchie Boy, the, 100. 
Kittredge, G- L., 36, 96, 104, 107, 

112, 116, 155, 157, 192, 215, 

218, 231. 
Knight of the Burning Pestle, 92, 

200. 
Koch-Grunberg, Theodor, 24, 25, 

33. 
Krapp, G. P., 28. 
Krehbiel, H. E., 129. 
Kurburu's song, 20. 
Kwai, the, 15, 25, 34. 

Lackey Bill, 226. 

Lady Caroline of Edinboro Town, 

201. 
Lady Isabel, 94. 
Lady Maisry, 94, 96, 160. 
La Flesche, Francis, 17, 21. 
Lambarde, William, 49. 
Lamentacio Dolorosa, 175. 



INDEX 



243 



Lamkin, 100, 195. 

Landtmann, G., 30. 

Lang, Andrew, 67, 107, 235. 

Lang, H. R., 141. 

Lass of Roch Royal, The, 93, 137, 

152. 
Last Longhom, The, 138, 227. 
Lawrence, W. W., 216, 217, 221. 
Leesome Brand, 79. 
Le Jeune's Relations, 15. 
Life's Railway to Heaven, 230 
Lily of the Valley, The, 209. 
Literary words in the ballads, 

109. 
Little Brown Jug, 54, 64. 
Little Harry Hughes, 196. 
Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane, 

208. 
Little Old Sod Shanty, The, 106, 

207, 208, 223, 226, 230. 
Lomax, J. A., 134, 150, 210, 214 

ff., 228, 235. 
London Bridge, 38. 
Lone prairie, The, 223, 226. 
Longfellow, H. W., 41, 203. 
Long Long Trail, The, 152, 205. 
Lord Bateman, 196. 
Lord Lovel, 94, 137, 195. 
Lord Randal, 48, 93, 122, 134, 

140, 154, 160, 163, 168, 195, 

196. 
Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, 

94, 160. 
Lorena, 92, 152, 220. 
Lorla, 210. 

Love in Disguise, 226. 
Love Rune of Thomas de Hales, 

176. 
Lover's Return, the, 201. 
Lovewell's Fight, 203. 
Lowlands Low, the, 197. 



Lucy Long, 225. 

Lucy Neal, 225. 

Lullaby to the Infant Jesus, 175. 

Lyke Wake Dirge, 133. 

Lyngbye, H. C, 73, 106. 

Macaffie's Confession, 227. 
Mackenzie, A. S., 5, 30. 
Madden, Sir F., 49. 
Magalhaes, Jose V. Couto de, 27. 
Maid and the Palmer, 80, 168. 
Maid Freed from the Gallows, 

The, 53, 78, 93, 122, 134, 144. 
Maori, the, 10. 
Marching Round the Levy, 61. 
Marching Through Georgia, 152. 
Marie Hamilton, 94. 
Martinengo-Cesaresco, Countess, 

122. 
Mary moder cum and se, 172. 
Mary of the Wild Moor, 201. 
Matthew of Paris, 49, 168. 
Matthews, Brander, 219. 
Matthews, Washington, 24, 33. 
Maypole dance, 64, 94. 
McGill, Josephine, 193. 
Mediaeval literary conventions in 

the ballads, 110, 167. 
Melanesians, the, 15, 22. 
Mermaid, The, 197. 
" Metis " Song of the Buffalo 

Hunters, 221. 
Miles, E. B., 128. 
Miles, Joseph T., 158. 
Milkmaid, The, 134. 
Miller Boy, The, 62. 
Miller, Emery, 208. 
Miller, G. M., 155. 
Milman, H. H., 130. 
Miracles of Our Lady, The, 172. 
Mississippi Girls, 206. 



244 



INDEX 



Moody and Sankey, the evange- 
lists, 134. 

Mooney, James, 3, 14, 22. 

Moore, Frank, 203. 

Moore, John Robert, 123. 

Motherwell, William, 122. 

Moulton, R. G., 4, 5, 27, 28. 

Mulberry Bush, 58. 

Murray, J. A. H., 81, 82, 94, 190. 

Myers, C. S., 230. 

My Little Old Sod Shanty, 106, 
207, 208. 

My Maryland, 228. 

My Old Kentucky Home, 208, 
213, 224. 

Name "ballad," the, 39. 

Nancy of Yarmouth, 204. 

Nashe, Thomas, 52. 

Nathan Hale, 203. 

Navaho song, 24. 

Negro revival hymns, 129-132. 

Neocorus, 71, 75. 

Newell, W. W., 53, 57, 65, 93, 
155, 192, 210. 

New English Dictionary, 40, 43, 
166. 

Newton, Henry, 33. 

New Webster International Dic- 
tionary, 40. » 

Nichols, John, 90. 

Night-Herding Song, 221. 

Noah's Flood, the Chester, 182. 

noels, 169, 171. 

Norton, Caroline E., 137. 

Nut-Brown Maid, the, 150. 

Oats and Beans and Barley, 60. 

Obongo, the, 25. 

Ojibway song, 32. 

Old Black Joe, 106, 213, 224. 



Old Chishohn Tr-ail, The, 106, 
215, 222, 223, 224, 226, 228. 

Old Dan Tucker, 54, 152, 219. 

Old Grumble, 200. 

Old Man Under the Hill, 226. 

Old Shawnee, The, 211. 

Omaha, the, 16, 17, 21. 

One little, two little, three little, 
Injuns, 133. 

One, two, buckle my shoe, 133. 

Out of the Blossom, 126. 

Over There, 152, 205. 

Pack Up Tour Troubles, 205. 
Padelford, F. M., 140. 
Pane, Ramon, 23. 
Paper of Pins, A, 134. 
Pastance with gude companye, 

81. 
Paumari, the, 26. 
Pawnee, the, 18. 
Pepys, Samuel, 42, 92, 93. 
Percy, Bishop, 45, 89, 90, 103. 
Percy and the Douglas, the, 42, 

105, 160. 
Percys, the, 167. 
Perrow, E. C, 110, 136, 224, 226. 
Peter Martyr d'Anghrera, 24. 
Piers Plowman, 97, 165. 
Piper, E. F., 61, 193, 219, 229. 
Pirates' Chorus, 158. 
Play party songs, 60 ff. 
Poor Lonesome Cowboy, A, 138. 
Poor Lorella, 210, 234. 
Poor Mary Sits A-Weeping, 60. 
Porter, M. V., 22. 
Powers, Stephen, 1. 
Prentice Boy, The, 201. 
pricksong, 166. 
Prioresse's Tale, The, 168. 
Proud Elselille, 70. 



INDEX 



245 



Proud Lady Margaret, 160. 
Psychic suggestion in poetry, 84. 

Quaker's Courtship, The, 133. 
Queen Anne, 59. 
Queen Emma, 185. 

Railroad Corral, The, 226, 230. 

Ralston, W. R. S., 68. 

Rambling Cowboy, The, 226. 

Ramsay, Allan, 103. 

Randolph, Earl of Chester, 9-7. 

Randolph, Innes, 229. 

Rattlesnake Song, 210, 226. 

Refrains, 76. 

Rejected Lover, The, 137. 

Rexford, Eben E., 227, 229. 

Rhys, Ernest, 173. 

Rice, Wallace and Frances, 229. 

Rice, T., 225. 

Richard Hill's Commonplace 

Book, 175, 177. 
Richie Story, 100. 
Rich Merchant of London, 201. 
Rickert, Edith, 126. 
Ridderen i Hjorteham, 170. 
Riddles Wisely Expounded, 108, 

123. 
Ride of Billy Venero, 226, 229. 
Ride of Paul Yenarez, 227. 
Ring of Roses, A, 59. 
Ritson, Joseph, 42, 45, 49, 103, 

184. 
Robert Grosseteste, 186. 
Robert Manning of Brunne, 186. 
Robin and Gandeleyn, 109, 110, 

123, 165, 166, 174, 188. 
Robin Hood, 82, 97, 102, 105, 107, 

110, 140, 144, 154, 166, 167, 

188, 216. 



Robin Hood and Little John, 81, 

190. 
Robin Hood and the Monk, 165. 
Robin Hood and the Potter, 165. 
Robin Hood dnd the Ranger, 108. 
Robin Hood and the Shepherd, 

102. 
Robin Hood Newly Revived, 98. 
Rob Roy, 79. 

Rabyne and Makyne, 149. 
Romance of the Rose, 47. 
Rondeau, 42. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 216. 
Root, George F., 212. 
Rose of England, The, 99, 110, 

167. 
Rose is Railed on a Ryse, This, 

126. 
Rosin the Bow, 226. 
Rossetti, D. G., 41, 140. 
Round and Round the Village, 

58. 
Rowe, Nicholas, 103. 
Roxburgh ballads, 200. 
Royster, J. F., 49. 

Saalbach, Arthur, 56. 
Salvation Army, 75. 
Sankey, Ira D., 209. 
Sapir, Edward, 29. 
Satire against women, 124. 
Saunders, W. H., 207. 
Saving of Crotey City, 172. 
Schelling, F., 166. 
Schliehter, 10. 
Schmidt, Erich, 8, 35. 
Schmidt, Dr. Max, 26. 
Schnadahupfln, 76, 157. 
Sehweinfurth, G. A., 10. 
Scott, F. N., 22. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 101, 103. 



246 



INDEX 



Seligman, C. G., 20. 

Semang, the, 10, 25. 

Seri, the, 10. 

Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, 185. 

Shakers, the, 75. 

Sharp, C. J., 93, 119, 137, 152, 

193. 
Shearin, H. G., 193. 
Sheffield Apprentice, A, 198. 
Shenstone, William, 42. 
Ship's Carpenter, The, 197. 
Shortened Bread, 213. 
Sidgwick, F., 87, 107, 176. 
Sievers, R., 99. 
Silver Dagger, 211. 
Silver Jack, 229. 
Sioux, the, 21. 
Sir Aldingar, 110, 167. 
Sir Andrew Barton, 99, 167. 
Sir Orpheo, 173. 
Sir Patrick Spens, 41, 45, 102, 

118, 154, 160. 
Sister Helen, 41, 140. 
Skip to My Lou, 61. 
Smith, C. Alphonso, 155, 193, 

195, 231. 
Smith, Reed, 193, 195. 
Smith's Affair at Sidelong Hill, 

203. 
Soldier, soldier, 133. 
Soldier, The, 201. 
Soldier, The Godless French, 

203. 
Song of Dekum, 21. 
Song of the Bird's West, 18. 
Song of the Boxer, 204. 
Song of the Incarnation, 174, 175. 
Song of Joseph and Mary, 174. 
Song of the "Metis" Trapper, 

134. 
Song of a Tree, 132. 



Song of the Trees, 19. 

Song of the Wren, 18. 

Song on a fox and geese, 125. 

Songs composed by women, 20- 

22. 
South African Dutch, 170. 
Spencer, B., 34. 
Springfield Mountain, 210, 234. 
Standard Dictionary, The, 40. 
Stanley, H. M., 10. 
Stanleys, the, 167. 
Starving to Death on a Govern- 
ment Claim, 206. 
Stecher, Joe, 228. 
Steenstrup, J. C. H. R., 70, 72, 

73, 173. 
Steere, J. B., 26. 
Stempel, G. H., 65, 83, 88, 107, 

140, 150. 
St. Nicholas and Three Maidens, 

172. 
Stoning of St. Stephen, The, 181, 

182. 
Storm, Theodor, 235. 
Stow, G. W., 16. 
Stratton Water, 41. 
Structural repetition, 121-139. 
St. Stephen and Herod, 118, 123, 

142, 164, 168, 173, 180, 182, 

184, 189. 
Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 158. 
Sumer is icumen in, 49, 55, 78, 

184. 
Susannah, or Seemly Susan, 172. 
Swanee River, The, 208, 224. 
Sweet Betsy from Pike, 206, 227. 
Symposius, 94. 

Tamlane, 81, 82. 

Taylor, Marshall W., 130. 

Tee-Totallers Are Coming, 132. 



INDEX 



247 



Texas Rangers, The, 204, 234. 
There Was a Romish Lady, 92, 

199. 
Thomas a Beket, the Murder of, 

182. 
Thomas de Hales, 176. 
Thomas Potts, 100. 
Thomas Rymer, 48, 56, 78, 165. 
Three Sailor Boys, The, 196. 
Thomas of Erseldoune, 165. 
Thuren, H,, 74, 166. 
Tipperary, 152, 205, 220. 
Tolman, A. EL, 193. 
Toxophilus, 98. 
Trip to Chinatown, A, 213. 
True Lover's Farewell, The, 137. 
Turpin, Dick, the highwayman, 

226. 
Tuskegee singers, the, 224. 
Twelfth Day, A Ballad of the, 

180. 
Two Brothers, The, 79, 93, 195, 

197. 
Two Little Girls in Blue, 213. 
Two Sisters, The, 53, 54, 80, 136, 

196, 197. 
Tyler, M. C, 203. 
Types of American song, 201- 

202. 

Uhland, J. L., 43. 

Uniformity of the ballad style, 

146. 
Unfortunate Rake, The, 207. 
Unreconstructed, 228. 

Vigfusson and Cleasby, 69. 

Village Bride, The, 201. 

Visions of Seynt Poul, The, 172. 



Wee Wee Man, The, 165. 

Wendell, Barrett, 215. 

Weeping Mary, 128. 

Weeping Willow, the, 210. 

Weevilly Wheat, 61, 62. 

We're Marching Down to Old 
Quebec, 204. 

Weston, Jessie L., 126. 

When I Became a Rover, 226, 

When This Cruel War is Over, 
204. 

Whiffen, Thomas, 10, 22, 24, 25, 
27, 30, 34, 145. 

Whoopee-Ti-Ti-Yo, 227. 

Wife of Usher's Well, The, 102. 

Wilde, Oscar, 158. 

William of Malmesbury, 184. 

Willie and Mary, 200. 

Willie Reilly, 219. 

Wissmann, H. von, 10. 

Wolf, Ferdinand, 141. 

Wood, J. E., 26. 

Wordsworth, W., 18. 

Work, Henry C, 204. 

Wrap Me m a Bundle, 228. 

Wreck of the Hesperus, The, 41, 
118. 

Wreck of the Lady Elgin, The, 
212. 

" Wrenched accent " in the bal- 
lads, 108. 

Wundt, Wilhelm, 8. 

Young Beichan, 160, 196. 
Young Charlotte, 124, 209, 213, 

223, 226, 234. 
Young Hunting, 160. 
Young Thomlin, 82, 190. 
Young, W. T., 38. 



Wars of Germanie, The, 226. Zip Coon, 152, 225. 

Warton, Thomas, 184, 185. Zulu, the, 25, 30, 34. 

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